Page:Philosophical Review Volume 21.djvu/205

187 an extreme form quite as destructive in its way to sound criticism as the other extreme, the economic, or groceries view of literature.

Returning to the auto-teleological method of interpreting moral experience, it becomes evident that on the whole it means to employ the amplificatory use of the concept 'meaning,' but often uses it in a confusing combination with the relational and psychological uses. Hegelian motifs, psychological and epistemological problems and methods, a teleology that carries you into the single moral experience and a teleology that carries you beyond and into a general process of experimentation; all this represents a perplexing mixture.

The results of this study of moral experience seem discouraging. Three methods, the biological, the psychological, and the auto-teleological, have failed to provide a definite and satisfactory interpretation of the meaning of moral experience. A mistaken use of the objective and a resultant failure to catch the full implications of the moral as opposed to both the non-moral and the immoral; a descriptive frittering away of the whole problem; excessive simplicity of reading or laxity of method and ambiguous definitions: such are the leading causes of this lack of success. Does this mean ultimate failure? I think not. Of course, ethics may surrender its whole constructive program and devote itself exclusively to descriptive problems of psychology and anthropology. This would be the natural result of too narrow an emphasis on the psychological method, for such a method does not favor constructive ethics. But a success that is due to lack of ambition ought not to be highly prized. Turning to the other two methods, the biological and the auto-teleological, they at least have the courage of the attempt. They have certain valuable moments in common. They both emphasize (1) the relation of moral experience to life as a process of development, (2) the plasticity of moral content, (3) efficiency as a test of moral worth. This is true, of course, only of personal idealism and pragmatism, and not of the Kantian type of the auto-teleological method. The two modern types of the auto-teleological method, however, possess certain distinct advantages over the biological method. They make more of the dynamic of