Page:Philosophical Review Volume 4.djvu/321

305 the lower animals. Obviously, however, such characteristics are not capable of being elaborated into morality without Reason and Self-consciousness. Many animals get the length of resenting the treatment of their offspring or their companions as they would the treatment of themselves; but to reflect on our own conduct, and to make it the subject of gratitude, which we then call 'approval,' or of resentment, which we then call 'disapprobation,' is the prerogative of humanity, and indeed of adult civilized humanity alone. Sophocles, with admirable truth to nature, makes the remorse of Neoptolemus for the fraud that he has perpetrated on Philoctetes, only awake in its full force when the deed is already completed. Then, indeed, it does awake and makes the young hero, in spite of the casuistry of Ulysses, in spite of a case rendered almost overwhelmingly strong by the considerations both of patriotism and of worldly wisdom, return the arrows which he had only to retain in order to ensure victory for his country and unequaled prestige for himself. The scheme of the Philoctetes is the triumph of the Categorical Imperative. The main conceptions of Ethics (Justice, Rightness, Equity), are borrowed from geometry, and the perception of the analogy between the two sciences crops up frequently in the history of Philosophy from Plato to Spinoza. As in geometry we can take the straight line, and, fixing our attention on its length and straightness only, while we vary in every possible manner its position and direction, can deduce the whole body of truths embraced in the six books of Euclid, so in morals we can take the act (say a fraudulently injurious one), and, fixing our attention on its fraud and injuriousness alone, can experiment with the conception by conceiving it as emanating from our enemies, our friends, or ourselves, and thus experimenting can form the conception of its general hatefulness or badness. The favor which the novel and the drama enjoy in the world, is largely due to the fact that they assist us in this sort of experimenting. We see in the conduct of the hero, if worthy, what we hope our own might be if placed in circumstances similar to his, or, if unworthy, we feel with him the pang of self-disapproval. Hence that sort of fiction which portrays the life closest to us, is that which always holds its own in popular esteem. The romance of distant ages and countries will occasionally serve to pass the time, but the novel that we cannot do without, is the novel that will enable us to see ourselves in the circumstances in which we are not unlikely to be placed.