Page:Philosophical Review Volume 6.djvu/245

229 he should appeal, to settle the case justly? To ask this question is to ask—is it not?—for a further thought of self, one which should see farther, be wiser, do better than either of these two which come up to create his dilemma. Generally, indeed, we quiet our apprehensions in just the way which the terms of our psychological explanations are going on to require; we appeal to some one else in whom we trust as having arrived at more information or deeper insight into the conditions of the social life of the neighborhood, than we have. He then, this alter, this wise man, is a further thought of a self.

So we may trust to this instance of social embarrassment—with its sharp ethical meaning in our practice—to show that the question of the further development of the sense of self, based, as we said above, on the conflicts of the two earlier partial selves, is really one of vital social meaning, and that, too, in the ethical sense.

Again, if we look at the doctrines of the rise of the ethical sense which have become historical, we see that they represent constructions based on the partial selves, described as 'habitual' and 'accommodating' respectively. These historical doctrines, we may say, fall into two classes: those which base the ethical sentiments upon sympathy, on the one hand; and those, on the other hand, which base them upon custom or habit. Let us look a moment at each of these attempts to account for the genesis of the moral sentiments, taking the latter first. This view seeks to account for the sense in a man that he 'ought' to do a thing, by the tendency in him to feel that things are going well when he is working along the lines guaranteed by his past actions or habits. What is best for him to do, is what is fight; and what is best is that which has been established in the course of his life by adaptation, utility, and development. The sense of right, therefore, to this view is simply the consciousness of certain habits of the mental organism. Without going into detail to justify this brief