Page:Philosophical Review Volume 27.djvu/545

No. 5.] he writes, is essentially the following. "We allow ourselves to follow the impulse to new activities, provided they do not conflict with already established purposes. The completed whole is achieved by excluding contradictory and discordant elements as we move forward in the direction of the largest meaning which, from day to day, we are able to discern." That these impulses must not be accepted in the uncritical way demanded by the so called 'voluntaristic' writers, is one of the most fundamental contentions of the book. On the other hand the information that only those impulses are worth adopting that promise some sort of pleasure, either in pursuit or attainment, gives us little help in the actual conduct of life. What the students in an ethics class want to know is what particular modes of activity are valuable, what concrete (or "objective") ends are worth pursuing. In a chapter which if it contained anything really new would probably be in so far false, Professor Everett gives the undergraduate the best discussion of this subject that he will be able to find in any text-book.

The relationship of a writer of the type of Professor Everett to his intellectual ancestors seems to me to be something more than a mere matter for the quarrels of pedants. As a matter of fact ninety out of every hundred teachers of ethics in the English-speaking world today are, in essentials, members of the school which began with Shaftesbury, and which counts Hutcheson, Hume, and Adam Smith among its most illustrious members. This statement holds for Green and his followers, who can not too much express their scorn and contempt for these "superficial thinkers," just as truly as it does for a man like Professor Westermarck. To call these founders of our modern faith intuitionists, as Professor Everett does, and to contrast their position with an empirical or "historical" view is hopelessly confusing. The moral judgment is the reaction of the personality to a suggested end or aim. According to ethical rationalism this reaction has its source in reason. According to Professor Everett, if I understand him, this reaction has its source in the sympathetic and aesthetic emotions. The latter view is that of Shaftesbury, the former of Hume. Both of these men undoubtedly left much to be said on this subject. It is for their descendants to fill up the lacunae. They both, especially Hume, said much which their followers have not taken the trouble to assimilate. The latter will be more likely to get what may be had for the asking if they are fully cognizant of their relationship to their intellectual ancestors. Some of the most unfortunate gaps and inadequacies in Professor Everett's account of the moral life—gaps and inadequacies which are such from the point of view of his own general