Page:Philosophical Review Volume 25.djvu/496

484 the rôle of shortsighted and injudicious parents. ... It is truth and the ever-progressive discrimination of truth which alone conduce to moral conduct" (p. 130).

But if we define our ethically right attitude simply as one which is derived from a knowledge of facts and their consequences, our theory does not differ essentially from that, for example, of Herbert Spencer (especially in his treatise on Education). Spencer has the same high scorn of those heteronomous systems which display, perhaps not so much distrust of the experiential sanctions for conduct, as an incompetence in recognizing them, an imperfect development of causal reasoning. But Spencer would have us hold to authority in some form or other until such time as the causal consciousness is so vivid in all of us that we can surely perceive the relations between our ideals and our experiences. How far Holt would accept this reservation; how far, on the contrary, he would advise the bolder attempt which Arthur Balfour pictures, 1 is not wholly clear. He has a place for authorities that tell the truth, and are known to tell the truth (p. 114). It is rather the lying authority, which while exhorting us to suppress our wishes is at the same time busied in suppressing the facts (p. 133), that is to be condemned. The impression received from my reading is that Holt judges most human authorities to be of the latter kind, the more particularly when they allege a divine sanction (p. 130). In this respect, Holt's views are similar to those of many other modern writers.

The distinctive character of his doctrine must be found in another aspect of what I have called the 'natural relation to facts.' For there are really two sets of facts which the moral life has to consider, the facts of the world in which our wishes are to be worked out, and the facts of those wishes themselves, defined as specific responses (or dispositions to respond) of our own organisms (p. 56). Our wishes also are objectively given. And it is the business of right conduct not alone to know the facts of the environment, but so to know them that we can satisfy our wishes. To refrain from eating mushrooms because some mushrooms are poisonous is not ideal conduct; our task is