Page:Philosophical Review Volume 25.djvu/160

148 human nature. When we ask whether a given approval is justified, almost always there is in the background of our mind the reference to a standard human constitution as the basis of all possible satisfaction; believing this to exist in some form, and to act as a steadier and corrector of our judgments, we may condemn another man's approval of the moment because we have reason to think that in the long run its object will not turn out really satisfying. But more than this can be said. I think we feel also that justified approval somehow stands for a character to reality not limited to the mere correctness of our anticipation of psychological consequences in the form of pleasure; it implies a confidence that the way things appeal to human nature is fundamental and central in reality, and can be counted on, when followed cautiously, not to lead us astray. But this estimation of the significance of the feeling in the scheme of things, or any other explanation, does not do away with the feeling itself; good would not have the same meaning in our lives, if it were a mere intellectual judgment, which it has by being a judgment plus a feeling attitude toward the object of the judgment.

Possibly my position may be made clearer by comparison with another and related concept. 'True,' if I may be allowed to presuppose without justification the definition which appears to me valid, may be taken to have a certain objective meaning,—the correspondence between^idea and reality. But here also there seems to be something which the definition leaves out, and that is the fact of belief; to try to get the full significance of the word 'true' without a reference to that experience of assent, and confidence, and a mind at rest, which primarily is a state of feeling, seems as impossible as to get the full sense of the word 'good' without reference to approval. It appears to me that the parallel is a close one; that as the objective content of true, or correspondence, is to the feeling of belief, so the objective content of good, or capacity for desire-satisfaction, is to the feeling of approval. And as approval postulates implicitly confidence in a community between reality and the way we feel about it, so belief postulates a community between reality and the way we think about it. The important difference is, that mere