Page:Philosophical Review Volume 22.djvu/413

No. 4.] among nations of culture." In fact, the two chief points of difference between uncivilized and civilized races indicate a line of evolution in the direction of (1) a widening in the circle to which moral obligations apply, coincident with the expansion of the altruistic sentiment, and (2) the increasing influence of intellectual considerations, effecting a "growing discrimination with reference to motives, negligence and other factors in conduct which are carefully considered by a scrupulous judge." The student is naturally led to infer that, since moral concepts and judgments are generalizations of emotional tendencies, there must have been a development of the latter corresponding to that of the former; and, in fact, such an evolution is indicated in his treatment of the altruistic sentiment.

So far, then, from really being in opposition to an ethics that claims as large a degree of objectivity as can be found in the general similarity of the human emotional constitution, it may be maintained that Westermarck's great work has done much to open the way for such an interpretation. In contending for ethical objectivity, I am therefore unwilling to reckon Westermarck as an opponent. His "subjectivity" of moral judgments does not exclude the possibility of their objective character in the sense here intended.

This sense will become clearer in the course of the present paper. Suffice it to say here that I believe that Westermarck has proved that moral judgments are of emotional (or better, of instinctive) origin. But this does not prevent their possessing a large degree of empirical stability and calculable usefulness in human situations. It seems to me, as a pragmatist, that this is the only sense in which any judgments are ever objective. However, the reader need not be a pragmatist in order to agree with the principal contentions of this paper; if he balks at my use of 'objective,' and 'objectivity,' let him substitute therefor 'general validity,' or 'continued trustworthiness,' and he may still find himself in agreement with my main thesis.