Page:Philosophical Review Volume 6.djvu/442

426 the answers varied greatly. This primary element was corporeal, and thus ultimate reality and the world of common experience were the same in kind. This fact made comparison inevitable, and as the former became more remote, the latter became more unreal. Parmenides widened the breach by making the real an absolute One, a corporeal 'thing in itself,' which reduces the world of experience to a fiction and an unreality. The Atomists split this One into atoms, thus making the disparity greater. II. When the ethical problem was raised, it also took the form of a search for. The new speculation likewise was soon forced to deny the validity of ordinary morality, because the underlying principle it sought was of one kind with the facts it was meant to explain. III. The word used to denote the existing code of morality was, which originally meant 'use,' but covers also what we call 'law.' Demokritos used this word metaphorically to express the unreal character of our every-day knowledge. In making his distinction between 'bastard' and 'true-born' knowledge, he assigned what we call the 'secondary qualities of matter' to the province of Use, and this gives the key to the whole theory of Law and Nature. As the beginnings of applied natural science had raised the problem of the world, so did practical legislation raise the problem of ethics. Previously, customary laws had been regarded as fundamental or even divine, but a law framed by a known lawgiver was clearly made,' and therefore, from the point of view of, artificial and arbitrary. This attitude is indicated by the use of the word in much the same sense as. As the word may mean either the giving or the adoption of laws, it contains the germ not only of the theory of an original legislator, but also of the Social Contract theory. When knowledge of the diversity of customs spread, men's suspicion of the arbitrariness of all moral judgments was confirmed. IV. Thus may be seen a close parallelism between the cosmological and the ethical problem of the fifth century B.C. In comparison with the ultimate of things and an abstract ideal of right, the every-day world and ordinary morality were felt to be unreal. In both cases the error came from the same source, in that the underlying reality of both was sought in pari materia. The opposition was inevitable in the beginnings of philosophy, but it is an anachronism now, which nevertheless lives on in theories which would reduce the world to the interaction of vibrations, and society to a compromise of 'natural rights.'

This paper attempts to explain the origin of the sentiment of duty. To feel a duty implies three things: (1) that a service is claimed from us; (2) that we feel the force of the claim; (3) that a certain effort is necessary to perform the service. The various duties fall into two groups, 'personal' and 'impersonal.' The essential feature in personal duty is a recognition of, and devotion to, a higher personality. The superior man, by his mere