Page:Philosophical Review Volume 4.djvu/117

101 of altruistic actions. Nature, indifferent to our happiness, indifferent to our morals, but sedulous of our survival, commends disinterested virtue to our practice by dressing it in the splendor of ethical sentiments. Kant found the moral law sublime, the naturalistic creed finds it ingenious. On the naturalistic view free-will is an absurdity. The illusion of freedom must have arisen by natural selection for the sake of preservation. "The persistent contradiction between that which is thought to be true, and that which is felt to be noble and of good report, not only produces a sense of moral unrest in the individual, but makes it impossible for us to avoid the conclusion that the creed which leads to such results is somehow unsuited for 'such beings as we are in such a world as ours.'" There being a conflict between the sentiments associated with and subservient to morality, and the naturalistic account of their origin, what relation to ethics has the teaching of Naturalism on the final results of human endeavor? On the naturalistic theory are moral ends adequate and naturally consistent? It cannot harmonize and make consistent egoism and altruism. Is it emotionally adequate, does it provide us with an ideal that can exhaust our energies and satisfy our aspirations? Our ideals are framed according to the measure of our thoughts. Our thoughts tend to dwarf the importance of man, to make him a natural object among natural objects. Soon man, the sentient world, man's thoughts and deeds, will be no more, and nothing will be the better or worse for his labor, devotion, and suffering. We desire, however, to give our service to that which is universal and abiding. Our ethical energies and aspirations cannot be long satisfied on so transitory and so unimportant an accident in the general scheme of things as the fortunes of the human race, its development, feelings, life, or moral quality.

The content of this article can be best anticipated from the statement with which it opens: "The question of Ethical Rigorism is, historically considered, the question of the philosophical relation of Schiller to Kant." The author confines himself in the present article to an inquiry as to the historical relation of these two men, or more exactly, as 'the article itself shows, into the historical development of Schiller in his attitude to the Kantian philosophy. To this end copious selections are made from Schiller's correspondence