Page:Philosophical Review Volume 9.djvu/424

408 abiding by the concrete, while Kant logically must end as he began, in an abstract formalism. For Butler, virtue is not bare logical consistency, but self-consistency, and vice is not bare logical contradiction, but self-contradiction. It is this conception that leads one to regard Butler as the first modern moralist who anticipated the cardinal truth set forth in that type of ethical thought which has received the name of the Self-realization or the Eudaemonistic theory. It would be absurd to maintain that Butler appreciated, even vaguely, the profound metaphysical implications of post-Hegelian speculation, but his system may be fairly regarded as a most suggestive forecast of the ethical application of the Neo-Hegelian thought, especially as developed by Green and as represented by the more recent statements of the 'self-realization' theory.

In the discussion of Butler's treatment of conscience, all theological reference has been purposely omitted, in order to exhibit his system of morals as independent of theological and religious sanction. It is true that in speaking of conscience Butler more than once refers to it as "the voice of God within us," as a faculty which anticipates "a higher and more effectual sentence," and in similar phrases. And such language has frequently led to the criticism that the Deus ex machina becomes the fundamental principle of his ethics. Mr. Leslie Stephen says that "Butler's escape from the vicious circle really consists in his assumption that the conscience represents the will of God. He is blind to the difficulty, because he conceives the final cause of conscience to be evident. This mysterious power, claiming an absolute supremacy, can derive its origin from nothing else than the divine source of all mystery. A blind instinct, ordering us to do this and that, for arbitrary or inscrutable reasons, is entitled to no special respect so long as we confine ourselves to nature. But when behind nature we are conscious of nature's God, we reverence our instincts as implanted by a divine hand, and enquire no further into their origin and purpose. No suspicion occurred to him that the marks of a divine origin which he supposed him- self to be discovering by impartial examination, might be merely the result of his having stated the problem in terms of theology.