Page:Philosophical Review Volume 6.djvu/248

232 Put psychologically, this is the recognition of the accommodating self. Actions which are done in deference to the presence and conduct of others, which involve a departure from the first promptings of self-interest, an abeyance of the aggressions of the self of habit,—such actions, this theory holds, are good. Self-denial is the keynote of morality; that is, in so far as morality is reflective at all. Now it might not be an adequate criticism of this view to say that it is one-sided, as the former theory is other-sided; some one-sided things are true. But the same tests which we applied to the habit theory may be brought into requisition here. Our moral approbations do not ipso facto attach to the generous man. Is generosity never wrong? Are the sudden, irresponsible, capricious appeals of our environment to our sympathies the highest ground and the final criterion of good conduct? Then the improvident is the better man, and the ascetic the greater saint.

And is there no virtue after all in habit? Is the incalculable, the exceptional, the impulsive, normally a higher kind, a safer kind, a more development-furthering kind of action than the regular, well-tested, smooth-acting, grounded acts of organic and intellectual habit? Or, if the reader wish to lift the question up to the higher plane of spiritual interest, apart from considerations of organic development, let me ask the question differently: Is the kingdom of spirit so chaotic that the accidental suggestions of sympathy are of more value in it than the reasonable action which is ruled by some kind of law? Even though we do not find, with the associationists, that the law of habit is adequate, even in the lower realm of biological growth, still the absence of law, be it in a realm of higher interests, would seem to be somewhat of a hindrance at least to our getting any sort of a doctrine of the meaning of the ethical life of man.

But, more positively, turning now to the child and observing him in the period when his personal relationships are becoming complex, say along through the third year, the dawning moral sense is then caught in the process of making, as it were. And