Page:Philosophical Review Volume 29.djvu/357

343 life that his own inmost nature, as he will discover, has not already laid upon him. Whatever the language—however differently man's inmost nature may be conceived by Stoic or Utilitarian, by Aristotelian, Spencerian or Oxonian—the logic of the theoretical standpoint and perspective is the same. For a theory needs no particular man's adherence for its greater certainty. The individual is to understand that, with the new proffer of guidance, he may expect no ingratiating overtures for his obedience and no irrelevant guarantees.

Incidentally, one immense disservice of this forensic absolutism of ethics has been its inherent misrepresentation of the true nature and importance of the authoritative principle in life. It is the function and service of any institution, in matters belonging to its province, to lead the individual beyond such limits of belief or conduct as his own reason may be able at the time to suggest or to approve. The ultimate ground of an institution's authority must lie in the enlightenment, elevation, strength and courage which its guidance enables him to gain. Ethical theory has as a rule been offered as a substitute for just this age-long sort of authoritative guidance—with the assurance that it will simplify the individual's obligations and give him immunity from imposition. It is thus the only sure foundation of democracy, since it alone enables the individual to solve his problems rationally and on their intrinsic merits. But syndicalism and political pluralism attack democracy at just this point, declaring it forever incapable of attaining to the quality which ethical theory purports to impart. Not democracy's inefficiency, nor its dishonesty, nor its levelling mediocrity, but its essential and necessary irrationality is the indictment. For the modern state subordinates the manifest immediate interests of groups and persons to an empty and indefinable notion of the welfare of the whole body politic. Disregarding in this way the only comprehensible standards by which the rationality of laws and policies might be determined, the state is adrift. Having no legitimate ends to work for, it cannot help