Page:Philosophical Review Volume 14.djvu/647

631 both spontaneity and liberty, we have seen, there is a deliverance. This means that they tend to set free all that which in each being is the self. Individuality thus progresses toward moral perfection. The attainment of this perfection, however, implies that the free act shall also be a right act. Here volition is aided by reason. Further, will means action, and in acting the will gains power and expands. So we may say that in its primitive spontaneity the will is developed from itself; will is at least implicitly liberty. In positing spontaneity, then, one posits a need of progress. But liberty implies not only expansion but concentration and tension, not only quantity but quality. In expanding itself the will returns upon itself, it becomes self-possessed. Self-possession, however, only exists for him who knows his power. Only he who reflects can organize his life and attain moral deliverance. One may object that this liberty, which by reflection attains self-possession, thus becomes separated from spontaneity, which is ignorant of itself. But spontaneity, as has been shown, posits itself, and this is the beginning of self-possession; the essence of self-position and self-possession is one, they differ only in degree. The lowest spontaneity has also some consciousness; this later develops into reflection. Thus, as one ascends the scale of being, the principle of autonomy grows and gains in strength. Now, looking at spontaneity and liberty as extremes, we may say that in the realm of activity the distance between them is exactly that between the individual and the person. On the plane of spontaneity, the desires are fragmentary, on the plane of reflective volition, they are coördinated into an organism; they belong to us, and form the basis of the ego. The spontaneous life is not, however, 'a-moral' but 'ante-moral,' because it ushers in human morality. Thus the antinomy is resolved. One may object that there remains an antinomy between necessity and these two modes of action. But, as we have seen, action posits itself, while necessity implies something other than itself, i.e., action is categorical, necessity is hypothetical. Necessity is a scientific postulate; it has no existence in the world of reason, which is the real world.

Comparative and genetic psychology finds its place between biology, with its variation and elimination, on the one hand, and ethics, with its worth of the ideal life of man, on the other. Its aim is to investigate, synthetically rather than analytically, the nature and mode of development of mental processes. One of the first things that comes out, in the study of the subject, is the way in which, in the lower ranges of mental development and evolution, everything hinges on practical behavior and activity. Another is the complexity of the biological foundations upon which the beginnings of the psychology of the individual are laid, and the fact that,