Page:Philosophical Review Volume 29.djvu/424

410 There has arisen a school of thinkers which asserts that the terms Good and Bad are indefinable. This might be described as a new form of Intuitionism. Should this view be accepted, the aim of ethics as a science would be merely to give an account of 'The Good,' or the things of which good can be predicated. This view, however, is based upon a logical atomism, and cannot be accepted. Our aim should be not to separate a thing from its parts, but to see it as a whole, in its environment. The predication of good is related to the wills of persons; it generally refers to that which satisfies desire. Goodness and badness only attach to objects related to ideals or wills, and to wills as related to their objects. The standard is, as Professor Mackenzie has said, the ethos of a people, or the morality of our world. 2em

Philosophical ethics is not inevitably committed to a sharp opposition to the deterministic trend of modern science. Consciousness itself provides the basis of true freedom. Consider the fundamental differences which its advent created. In the pre-conscious world, the developmental process reached an early limit through inherent inability to combine universality with complexity of organization. Developed intelligence individualizes its environment. Individualization brings to a maximum the number of stimuli and, through signification, their frequency also. Furthermore, it incorporates each element within the conscious sphere in its own specific nature. In this situation, a well marked response is extremely difficult. Action now depends upon conscious choice which supplants the previous mechanical mass action. The activity of the conscious subject has acquired freedom within stimuli by selection of its own determinants; it is "not, therefore, action wholly without cause, but action sequent upon one cause rather than another which prima facie—apart, i.e., from the subject's own choice—equals it in energy." The whole issue depends upon the nature of the resultant. The evolution of consciousness gradually brings a radical transposition wherein the individual becomes predominantly directive, and the environment is relegated to a secondary place. This is freedom of a perfectly general character. 2em