Page:Philosophical Review Volume 20.djvu/99

85 neither of whom, by the way, is ever mentioned. What were the methods of these men but the analysis of experience, the outcome of which, they held, proved that there is much more in experience than empiricists have ever dreamed of? Indeed it was precisely because he believed that he alone had been willing to stand by experience to the very end that Martineau called his own theory, in distinction from all others, idio-psychological. At bottom the same is true, with some limitations, of the Kantian system. The attack upon metaphysical systems of ethics must be based upon something better than the combination of misunderstanding and a priori reasoning here offered. But if, in the end, all non-idealistic theories will have to succumb to criticism, does it follow that I must not presume to say what ought to be the ideal for you or for the world because "one ideal is no 'higher' or 'better' or 'nobler' or more 'obligatory' than another, except for the person who has it"? Is it true that "I can recognize no 'obligation' either to form ideals or to conform to them, [because] if my ideal is simply what I will there is no sense in saying that my will ought to pursue it"? This follows only if by right we mean nothing more than the approbation of the present moment. But, though the author ignores the fact, this is not the interpretation put upon it by the great leaders of idealism. It is not the view of Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, and Hume, the modern founders of this theory. It is not the view of great contemporary representatives like Westermarck. Hume showed that, for common sense, right means that which is approved when all relations of the act to the judge's personal interests have been abstracted from,—the approbations of the "impartial spectator." Hutcheson pointed out that he who uses moral terms claims to have taken into consideration the interests of all parties affected. By a passing reference, undoubtedly an echo of very definite statements of Cumberland, Shaftesbury shows that he recognizes that moral epithets claim to be the outcome of a consistent ideal. If these positions are correct, you ought has at the lowest a very extensive range of application. And he who is thus addressed can be led to acknowledge it, a classical instance being King David's response to Nathan's parable. How far this range extends becomes, therefore, a matter for a systematic investigation, of which the author has not attempted to make a beginning. When he does so, he will find, I believe, that even the complete egoist—if there be such a person—can be convicted of inconsistency in so far as he disapproves of making the same sacrifice for another person that he is willing to make for his own future. He will find, I believe, that the representatives of rationalistic or logical ethics, with all their fumbling, were really on the track of the significance of consistency and its place