Page:Philosophical Review Volume 25.djvu/759

Rh like those of Spencer and Haeckel, were built upon three or four very abstract principles, none of which was original to the period itself. The 'Back to Kant' movement issued largely in philological criticism; theory of knowledge, in the hands of various types of positivists, was anti-metaphysical; and the most fruitful writers spent themselves upon the history of philosophy or upon special inquiries in aesthetics, psychology, and ethics. Religion, more perhaps than ever before in history, was regarded with indifference, and in art the idea of 'Art for art's sake' showed a morbid isolation from realities. Unified practical ideals were almost equally lacking. Individual freedom came to mean lack of restraint with no positive ideal of self-realization. Plans for social betterment went little beyond improvement of sanitation. The amassing of capital and the increase of technical efficiency serve only to illustrate the spiritual poverty of a period that could regard them as ideals. It was a period in which ends were dominated by means; persons were the slaves of things.

The inevitable consequences were pessimism and decadence, the spiritual nausea with which the age contemplated its own deformity. But many signs indicate that this period is past. In art particularly, the freest of all intellectual activities, realism, by exhibiting the ugliness of an age without ideals, has contributed to its downfall, and realism itself seems likely to be displaced by an art with more positive ideals. In philosophy, also, one can perceive a renewed interest in classical German idealism and tentative efforts toward more systematic studies. As yet these efforts have produced compromises rather than solutions but they mark a beginning. They inspire the hope that the alternative between person and thing, between causality by the aggregation of elements and creative synthesis, is to be boldly faced.

This book is a short, popular summary of the main points in ethics, approached first from the psychological standpoint, and later as problems in systematic ethics. Part I, entitled, "The Groundwork of Character," outlines and illustrates the psychological laws operative in the development of the moral life, discussing specifically the influence of heredity, physical and social environment, instincts, emotions, sentiments, the self, the will, and conscience. Part II, "The Realization of Character in Vocation," discusses moral criteria and standards, motives and sanctions of conduct, the places of duty and pleasure in the moral life, the virtues, and moral institutions. The material for the book has been drawn from a variety of sources. Among contemporary writers the influence of Dewey, Tufts, McDougall, Hobhouse, Westermarck, Baldwin, Rashdall, G. E. Moore, Royce, Muirhead, James,