Page:Philosophical Review Volume 27.djvu/668

656, something that has never been before and will never be again. But not every difference in thought, feeling, and action has worth as such; we need a criterion by which to appraise uniqueness. Professor Adler himself says: "Difference in the ethical meaning is not to be confounded with mere idiosyncrasy, or originality, not to say eccentricity. It is the kind of difference which elicits correlated difference in all spiritual associates" (p. 142, note). Although this will not serve as a satisfactory principle of measurement, it points to an ethical standard of some kind. We can accept the statement: "That every man is the equal of his fellows means that he has the same right as each of the others to become unlike the others, to acquire a distinct personality, to contribute his one peculiar ray to the white light of the spiritual life" (p. 143); but we should like to know how to tell that one peculiar ray from others and how to identify the white light. It is true, the individual, encompassed on every side by uniform public opinion, "hardly ventures to hold his own judgment against the judgments of the majority"; and "the impulses of the mass tend also to threaten his independence of action." There is, however, no special merit or value in a judgment or action simply because it is a man's own or because it is different from that of others. We are not interested in having an infinite variety of judgments pronounced or acts performed, except in so far as they contribute to truth and goodness; and we need principles of selection to help us sift the true from the false and the good from the evil, to distinguish mere "otherwiseness" and freakishness in thought and conduct from uniqueness that has ethical worth. We need a criterion that will enable us to tell " the kind of difference which elicits correlated difference in all spiritual associates" from the kind that does not, and we need to know when such difference is correlated.

Professor Adler finds the chief defect in ethics up to the present time in the lack of a definite description of the spiritual nature, and endeavors to supply it: "The spiritual nature is the unique nature conceived as interrelated with an infinity of natures unique like itself. The spiritual nature in another is the fair quality distinctive of the other raised toward the Nth degree" (p. 231). This formula is not more definite than that of other idealistic moralists; the ideal of the unique self needs to be defined, no less than the ideal of the true self. But nearly all ethical thinkers endeavor to furnish a fuller description of the ideal life than is indicated in their formulas. Besides, the formulas are not so empty as they seem because the moral philosophers tacitly read into them the basal ethical values which the race