Page:Philosophical Review Volume 15.djvu/513

495 of ethical valuation, and, if not, is there for ethical investigation a limiting concept or indefinable ultimate? If there be such an ultimate shall we find it in the individual or in society? Or is this antithesis between society and the individual a false one? If the ethical ultimate be not wholly definable, is it still possible to give this limiting concept some concrete filling? And, if this be possible, by what method or from what point of approach may we best gain content for our concept? To discuss in outline these problems is the purpose of the present paper. Now, of course, we must begin with the fact of morality, with the actual existence of the ethical life for and in self-conscious beings capable of self-determined, self-directed action. Moral action may not always be done with self-conscious deliberation and choice, but moral judgment always presupposes the possibility of self-conscious activity. Hence the starting point for the interpretation and systematization of ethical value-judgments must be found in these judgments themselves as actual attitudes of living persons. We must start from our own ethical experience, however confused and inconsistent it may seem, and whatever course of investigation we may pursue, its final term must be our own reinterpretated and clarified judgments. But it does not require a large acquaintance with the past, or much reflection on social evolution, to convince one that one's immediate judgments are in very great part resultants of social tradition. The confusion in contemporaneous ethical judgments is in part due to the application of traditional schemes of valuation to novel situations which have arisen through the rapid alteration of economic, scientific, and other conditions of social existence. Our civilization has undergone great modification through the agency of industrial, political, and intellectual factors that have worked on morality both directly and indirectly. The personal attitude in an ethical situation is determined by a complexity of factors. It is in part the resultant of the cumulative effects on the individual of past social situations and institutions, i.e., of that complex set of conditions denominated 'social heredity,' and in part the resultant of the natural and biological factors of individuality. Furthermore, the social aspects of every ethical situation present