Page:Philosophical Review Volume 27.djvu/665

No. 6.] the conception of worth unless we have some ideal of the whole in which and in relation to which the incomparable worthwhileness of a human being can be made good" (p. 103).

The language of the last quotation is ambiguous; it is open to the interpretation that the intrinsic worth of man cannot be established except by reference to a certain ideal of the whole, and that morality would have no foundation if there were no spiritual universe. All that Professor Adler shows, however, and perhaps means, is that a social whole is necessary in order that "worthwhile" personalities may be developed; and that our judgment of man's intrinsic worth demands such a universe. The great datum of ethics, he says, is that man is an end per se. Ethical theory must give an account of this. As possessing worth on his own account man is an ethical unit. Only as a member of the infinite spiritual universe does he possess the twofold attributes implied in worth inviolability with respect to outsiders and indefeasible intrinsic preciousness (p. 125). The universe is the necessary postulate required if the idea of right is to have validity; the ethical manifold, the spiritual universe exists in so far as there is right (p. 126). The thought here seems to be that inviolability and intrinsic preciousness and the idea of right presuppose the notion and even the existence of a spiritual universe, an infinite system of inter-dependence in which men as ethical units have their place. Here we are reminded of Kant,—of his postulates of pure practical reason: the existence of God and the immortality of the soul;—he is a theist while in Professor Adler's system "the God-idea is replaced by that of a universe of spiritual beings interacting in infinite harmony" (p. 126). His philosophy is rooted in the faith of the worthwhileness of man; it is because he conceives the individual as precious that he demands an infinite whole in which that preciousness shall not be lost. Our belief in the good calls for a world in which that good shall be preserved. In the final, beautiful chapter of the book, "The Last Outlook on Life," we find this idea nobly expressed:

"The world as we know it is itself the veil, the screen, that shuts out the interplay, the weavings and the interweavings of the spiritual universe. But at least at one point, in the ethical experience of man, is the screen translucent. The plan of the spiritual relation is there traced in outline. It is this plan that conveys the certainty as to what verily exists beyond, within, beneath.

"As to my empirical self, I let go my hold on it. I see it perish with the same indifference which the materialist asserts, for whom