Page:Philosophical Review Volume 8.djvu/212

196 that in taking to ourselves a philosophy we have only to consult directly for its effect upon action. The reflective faculty gives us a copy or representative of the environment, and if we tamper with that representative we tamper with our sole clue to action.

We sometimes tend to think of progress as a law of the universe. It is difficult to doubt that in almost every aspect of human life there has been a marked development. Yet on closer investigation certain doubts arise. Can our age be compared in intellectual force or artistic sense with the age of Pericles, in faith and wholeheartedness with the best ages of the mediæval period? Are we gaining in comfort and happiness? And if so, will our material welfare last? The doubts as to the reality of progress cut at the very roots of human life. Charges such as are made by Carlyle, Ruskin, and Tolstoi are not wholly met by appealing to empirical facts. Progress must include the development of the individual and the improvement of mental and social conditions. It may be urged (1) that the improvement of material conditions is in the end incompatible with the development of individual life; (2) that there is an ultimate conflict between the good of the individual and the good of society. As to the first consideration, the narrowing influence due to the work of bringing nature under control is not likely to continue. The second difficulty has recently found expression in two different ways. Mr. Kidd maintains that altruism is essential to society, but that an ultra-rational sanction, such as religion gives, is necessary to justify the demands of altruism to the individual. According to Nietzsche, our great evil is excessive altruism, which indicates the inability to assert one's self. Both commit the error of supposing that the individual life can find its realization and happiness in itself, apart from that of the race. We are likely to have just as much progress as we really try to have, and just of the kind that we really try to have.

The author of this article contends that the method of ethical investigation must be that of epistemology rather than that of psychology. Neither psychological, historical, nor sociological investigations can serve to establish the universal and necessary laws which ethics demands. The problem regarding the nature of morality cannot be answered upon purely psychological grounds. The object of ethics, however, is not merely the abstract notion of duty, or of the good, but the concrete judgments of value which are passed upon definite acts of will. Ethics, as a science, has to discover and exhibit the necessary and universal laws which govern the decisions of the will. Notwithstanding the current rejection of the Kantian ethics, the