Page:Philosophical Review Volume 13.djvu/671

657 moral ideal, and to determine this we must resort to a department of ethical research which we have hitherto only touched upon in passing.

The facts to which we must refer are, however, among the patent conclusions of contemporary thought. The moral ideal of a man is, in the first place, a social inheritance, an imitatively accepted body of sentiments, which constitutes the product of the accumulated experience of ages with regard to the conduciveness of various ways of action to the general welfare. The manner in which this accumulation takes place is familiarly illustrated by the figure of the bow and arrow,—a complex instrument brought to perfection by successive modifications, each occasioned by experience of some failure of the existing form to meet some felt emergency. Even so the common opinion as to what conduct is best adapted to the general welfare has been developed from the observed inadequacy of earlier conceptions. This, then, may be said to be that principle, which we were aware must needs underly the harmonious unity of the moral ideal,—an adaptation to super-individual interests, which has been secured by a certain phase of social evolution. But, in the second place, the moral ideal of a man is not merely passively received; on the contrary, it undergoes in the individual a development very closely analogous to its evolution in society. The judgments which he receives, he acts upon; and in so doing he is occasionally brought into conflict with a certain more or less powerful motive, a feeling of concern for the interests of his associates; and the dissatisfaction thus arising becomes the core of a modified moral sentiment. This is the process by which each of us has arrived at what appreciation he possesses of the requirements of the actual social relations in which he stands. It is only by the expression of the ideal in conduct, that the imperfections of its immaturity are revealed and corrected.

Let us return to the question of the relation of knowledge to virtue, and to the charge against ethical subjectivism, that it makes goodness a mere willingness to be good, wholly divorced from practical wisdom. The charge is unjust simply because the willingness to be good is so far from being a trait unconnected