Page:Philosophical Review Volume 7.djvu/446

432 judged according to its conformity with that imperative. The exclusion of feeling and the primacy given to the categorical imperative, necessarily brought in rigorism. This, woven into his rationalism, made the unconditioned command appear as a universal law valid for all. This result lay dormant in the conscience-theory, which is closely related to Kant's ethics. Kant not only employed the method of the conscience-theory with its enmity to feeling, but also extended the functions of conscience to the practical reason. In this latter procedure he overlooked the fact that, while conscience, in the Christian ethics, can furnish a content to the will, and can therefore command independently of the inclinations, the purely formal rule of his practical reason is necessarily referred for its content to the desires.

The aim of this article is to offer suggestions towards a history of morals in the period named, on somewhat different lines from those of Mr. Lecky's well-known work. The following presuppositions of such a history are discussed: (1) Moral progress occurs when either the natural tendencies of the individuals composing a community, or their environment, have been modified for the better. (2) There may be a healthy evolution of ideas while there is no racial progress, but deterioration. (3) Immediate needs may demand the sacrifice of long-cherished hopes, or a lower success may be achieved at the cost of a higher. (4) Stress of competition is generally a cause of progress, but sometimes of decay. (5) The most brilliant eras follow, rather than coincide with, those of real racial progress. (6) Periods of corruption are often symptomatic of political and social disintegration, not of racial decay. (7) Historical crises or convulsions resemble the cataracts of a river, which add nothing to its volume. (8) Religious movements always rise from social needs. (9) The church in the second and third centuries was a reform party in the Roman Empire, which aimed at the reconstruction of society on ethical principles. (10) All thoughtful men were seeking a remedy for the moral disease which had overtaken the Roman Empire. Christianity found two ideas, both of which it profoundly influenced: (a) a growing sense of the value of human life; (b) a growing sense of the necessity of regulating sexual relations.

Though the work of Mandeville exerted a great influence upon the ethical thought of his time, his Fable of the Bees having passed through eight editions before his death, it yet has been the subject of very little modern research. There are two principal points in Mandeville's writings: (1) his theory of the origin of society; (2) his inversion of the teleological