Page:Philosophical Review Volume 25.djvu/502

488 of wishes, as Holt has stated it, as a necessary element in our moral ideal. But when it becomes the leading element, so that what I have called local rights are the first things to be considered, it seems both to misrepresent and to complicate the moral situation. The ideal of rounded development and activity is unquestionably the law of that Nature worshipped both by Greekdom and by our contemporary physicalism. But the necessity for sacrificial choice is not provided for; and it cannot be eliminated. Nor can we evade the fact that it is precisely such choice that for most men must always constitute the conscious ethical crux. It is of little value to say to the soldier called upon by his country "So discriminate as both to satisfy your patriotic wish and your wishes for family life, social amenity and physical comfort." The synthesis is indeed better than the opposition, and wise and happy is he who can find it. But until what we call adaptation is complete, the moral law must deal with disjunctive judgments.

There is one phase of Holt's psychology to which this view the ethical problem seems more akin than the Freudian view. I refer to his theory of the subconscious. It is characteristic Holt's view of mind to seek what is usually called 'inner' in man's dealings with his environment. He prefers not to trust the 'inside information' of introspection. Almost we might say that for Holt, the man is his purpose; and his purpose is to discerned in the remote and inclusive objects of his action, rather than in any 'thoughts' which he might be able to serve up, or demand, as an account of himself. There is something like a reciprocal relation between the supposed 'inwardness' of a thought or motive and the remoteness of the object with which it is concerned: the more inward the thought, the more outward the object. The thoughts that we call subconscious, or 'secret' are those which are not on the surface of our minds because they are relating us to our distant rather than to our immediate concerns: while I appear to others and to myself to be purchasing