Page:Philosophical Review Volume 8.djvu/99

83 interest and value lie in the attainment of its own inherent purpose, the apprehension of truth and reality. The intellectual interest proper is an interest in the object itself; not in its uses for the will of the subject any more than in its affective value. Doubtless all knowledge is teleological, but its teleology is the immanent teleology of the intellect itself. If the world of science arises in response to our desires, it is not in response to our practical, but to our intellectual desires. As the only way to secure the advantage of morality is to lose sight of the advantage, so the only way to secure the practical advantage of knowledge is to pursue knowledge for its own sake. The intellectual life is no less 'paradoxical' than the moral life. Further, the recognition of the intrinsic value of knowledge secures to it an ethical significance otherwise impossible, a significance which is social as well as individual in its scope. Finally, the answer to the question, whether virtue can be taught, depends on our answer to the question, whether, and in what sense, 'virtue is knowledge.' A merely abstract knowledge, or a purely intellectual apprehension, has no influence on the will, and, therefore, affords no security for virtuous character or conduct. The knowledge which has practical significance is concrete, individual, and 'touched with emotion,' or affective tone. If morality is the expression of 'right reason,' then the awakening of reflection about the rational significance of action can hardly fail of its ethical consequences.

The nature of the individual is essentially social; a man's relations to his fellows are not addenda to his personality, but the inmost content and reality of it. Antagonism between the individual and society arises only from their imperfection. Society is an external necessity to the individual, because the latter is not sufficiently intelligent to grasp its meaning, or not sufficiently good to adopt its ends; and society on its part is a mechanical and most imperfect whole only because its members are but partly rationalized. The converse of this truth is that society is essentially individual. This does not mean that society, in approaching its ideal, becomes more like a physical organism in having one brain or one center of self-conscious activity. Society is a hyper-organism; it shows a tendency to be all in every part in a way to which the physical organism furnishes no adequate parallel. The principle of the essential coincidence of individual and social welfare implies that every particular good has its own place and meaning in a scheme of universal good. It means that there is a moral cosmos, and is thus the necessary hypothesis within which ethics moves. It occupies in the moral sphere a place analogous to the conception of the uniformity of nature in the sphere of knowledge. The distinction between public and private good is thus in the moral sphere entirely false. It is a necessary consequence of the principle on which