Page:Philosophical Review Volume 29.djvu/367

No. 4.] and urgent from the point of view of the class or person making the appeal?—a matter upon which a very great variety of evidences have a bearing, such as persistency in effort, willingness to suffer penalties, loss, suspicion, contempt or ridicule for the sake of a claim of right. (2) Apart from the terms of the specific appeal in question, does the appellant give the ordinary evidences of rationality, temperateness of judgment and personal responsibility? (3) Is the demand consistent with any reasonable estimate of the other wants, acknowledged or imputed, of the class or person appealing? (4) Is the demand apparently made with an intelligent consideration for the rights and interests of those upon whom it is made, as members of the same society?

It goes without saying, of course, that no criteria can be applied in human affairs with an automatic guarantee of certainty. It is not to be imagined that the criteria which are here suggested can be so applied. Only with the greatest likelihood of error, in many cases, can they take the measure of the matters to which they look. Certainly they must be far less easy of application than our substantive moral criteria are where and when these, happily, can be relied upon with full assurance. What is claimed for them, as a quality indispensable in the typical problems with