Page:Philosophical Review Volume 23.djvu/130

114 by the ends which human beings strive to realize. These ends really act as final causes with regard to action, yet both popular and scientific thought often treat them as efficient causes. Causes both external and internal make us always act in the same way under the same conditions. From the sociological point of view, social phenomena are neither good nor evil, but indifferent, like physico-chemical phenomena. The finalism which characterizes the facts of reason is determined by causes of the internal order. All forms of social thought obey the laws of finality. The phenomenon of human activity guided by voluntary ends which have both an affective and an ideal character, is part of the general order of nature. The creative force which causes the evolution of morals and customs, law and the institutions of civilized peoples, is always abstract thought. The notion of an absolute progress must give place to that of a relative progress, in the various manifestations of which there appears a common element, the augmentation of knowledge, whether physico-chemical, biological, or superorganic. The development of these three grand divisions of knowledge is the unique and permanent source of all social progress.

A historical survey of its development illustrates the fact that philosophy, if it aspires to a stable balance, must use all its resources in submitting to the reflective reason the moral as well as the speculative order, with the object of uniting in an integral synthesis the total content of human consciousness. Separatism is the vice of modern thought, though one which it is progressively overcoming. As judgments of fact and judgments of value arise from different preoccupations of our intelligence, it is natural that it should form them separately at first, but not less so that it should later compare them to see if they may not be combinable. Plato recognized the essential unity of the good, the beautiful, and the true. Christian tradition, from the Church Fathers to the Doctors of the Middle Ages, following first Plato and later Aristotle, was unanimous in forming a comprehensive conception of the task of philosophy. Beginning with the twelfth century, philosophy and theology became distinct disciplines, but no one, before the time of Descartes, found his duty or privilege to drop out of consideration any factor of consciousness. Descartes, however, erected separatism into a system. For him, to philosophize is to judge, to know; nothing more, nothing less; his first step is to divest himself of previous knowledge, belief, sentiment. Moral data become facts of consciousness simply, significant only as such. Spinoza, on the other hand, proclaimed a comprehensive, unified system; but his voice was unheeded. Kant embraced, indeed, in his criticism, the two domains of thought and action, but only deepened the moat which separated them. Then came the scientific movement, and knowledge, theory, became again supreme. Reaction set in with Brunetière's declaration of the failure of science. Pragmatism and voluntarism in various forms rapidly grained goundgained ground [sic], and today the issue is clearly drawn