asserting an "ought" is itself a phenomenon or fact, which belongs to the speculative branch and falls under its cognisance, as being determined by the laws governing the sequence of phenomena as such. In other words, the judgment which asserts the preferability of one thing to another is made what it is, say, 'that courage is better than craft,' by causes which are irreversible and belong to the domain of facts; apparently, therefore, however much the judgment may express an "ought," there is no validity in it beyond the validity of its being a fact, since if no one whatever passed the judgment it would become not merely invalid but nonexistent ; and apparently also those judgments only which do continue as facts and outlast or outweigh in fact other judgments, so as actually to influence practice, have a right to be obeyed,-a right derived in no measure from their containing an "ought," but solely from their actual permanence as facts. In this way the special function of the practical branch of Ethic seems destroyed, and itself subsumed under the speculative branch, the weight of its "ought" being exhibited as a case of weight of fact, and its right as a case of might. 4. But in so stating the dispute for the primacy we shall have proved too much; if this view were true, the practical branch would be not merely subordinated to the speculative, but it would be destroyed as a distinct branch. What is erroneous in it may be thus exhibited. It is true that all judg ments are facts; but the practical validity of judgments consists in their being existent at a particular time, in their being passed at the moment of the action passing from the present to the future. All BOOK I. CH. I. § 2. The special scope of Ethic. BOOK I. § 2. The special scope of Ethic. conscious acts—and it is only conscious acts and their consequences that are the object-matter of Ethicare judgments at the moment of their becoming acts, are preferences of one mode of acting to another. It is only when we look back upon them as past actions that they have a fixed or purely speculative character; each action has been a judgment in the moment of its birth as action, and its character as a judgment is that which has given it its character as a fact, that is, has made it, and not something else, a fact at all. The debate therefore between the two branches of Ethic must be thus settled the judgment is supreme at the moment of acting, but the actions which are its product have their validity not from their being practical judgments but from their being accomplished facts; and when it is urged that every judgment has its nature and content determined solely by the entire course of past actions and events, it must be replied that these actions at least have themselves become such, and have acquired their determinant force, solely by having once in their turn been judgments. The reference of judgment and action to different times dissolves the apparent contradiction between their claims. In looking at actions as past we consider them speculatively and as matters of fact; in looking at them in the moment of becoming past we consider them practically and as matters of judgment. Yet the apparent contradiction is too deep-seated and thorough-going to be satisfactorily removed by such brief remarks as the foregoing. It will soon reappear in a somewhat different shape. 5. When Ethic, then, is treated as a practical science, the debate is changed from one between judg ment and action to one between different kinds of judgment. Judgment is supreme in practice, in determining the future; but among judgments themselves what differences are discoverable, what judgments are superior, what inferior? Here is the question which, by dividing the opinion of moralists, renders necessary the thorough examination of the furniture, the phenomena, of consciousness. It is admitted that, since the enquiry is a practical one, the judgment, the preference of a better to a worse, the assertion of an "ought," is supreme; that we are not blind actors but judges and choosers of conduct. But if the judgment determines the conduct, what determines the judgment; aye and what ought to determine the judgment; for, in admitting judgment as supreme, we do not admit it in its character of fact but in its character of judgment, that is, as the assertion of a better or of an "ought"? Not that it is actually passed, but that it is a preference of a better to a worse, is what we mean by calling it a judgment. What kinds of judgments are better than others, what kinds of preferences are best, what is the supreme "ought," these are the questions which seem to have presented inextricable difficulties to ethical writers. 6. Now it is worthy of remark that the same question which has been raised between the speculative and the practical branches of Ethic, or rather the difficulty which lay at the root of that question, presents itself here again in a different shape, in the dispute between different kinds of judgment for the primacy. Pleasures and pains, it was said, are the springs of action. All conscious acts are done from these motives. As a matter of fact, they do produce BOOK I. CH. I. § 2. The special scope of Ethic. Book I. § 2. The special scope of Ethic. and guide action. No action takes place which is not the product of them, of course in their largest and widest sense. Gather up into one ideal the greatest and best, the most refined and most finely harmonised pleasures, including those which arise from a sense of duty fulfilled, with the smallest admixture of pain, and you have the famous conception of the Summum Bonum, svdasovía, happiness. When it is asserted that pleasure of this kind not only actually is, but also ought practically to be, the motive in determining judgment, when no difference of kind is recognised between the actual motive of action and the practical motive of choosing, or, if these two things are distinguished logically, it is yet maintained that the motive determining the judgment has no other validity than the pleasure, of whatever kind, which determines the action,-then is held the theory which, in many various modifications, is known commonly as the theory of the Utilitarian school. But if on the other hand it is held, that, besides the motive to action which is universal, namely, the avoidance of pain and the procuring of pleasure, of any or all kinds, there is another motive which alone has validity in determining the judgment, different in kind from pleasure and not derived from it, although always accompanied by it, namely, a sense. of duty or moral obligation; and that this element in the judgment is what gives it practical validity, though it may or may not determine it to become further action according as the pleasure attaching to it is greater or less than the pleasure attaching to other lines of conduct at the moment of choice; then is asserted the counter theory to the Utilitarian, a theory which for want of an already current single name may perhaps be called the theory of a Moral Law. And I believe that all theories of morals, ancient or modern, will be found to be some modification of these two, and to rest ultimately upon one of the two principles which I have indicated as the basis of each. For instance, under the Utilitarian principle may be reckoned both those theories which would deduce all moral virtues from self-love, or enlightened self-interest, and those which would deduce them from sympathy or benevolence, Schopenhauer's Neminem læde, immo omnes quantum potes juva, and Auguste Comte's Vivre pour autrui; for in both of these happiness or well-being is considered as the sole source of right, whether the person who is to enjoy it is oneself or another. And under the general principle of the other school, the principle of duty or obedience to a moral law, may be brought those theories of a self-determining Ego, Will, or Person, which is exhibited best in Kant's Kritik der Praktischen Vernunft, and also those which assume a religious shape, namely, obedience to the Will of God, which displays itself in the concrete duties of holiness, purity, self-denial, unworldliness, humility, and so on. 7. The intricacy in which all discussions are involved, which go deeply into the principles of these two schools, seems to me to flow from the difficulty of logically distinguishing between the validity which a thing has for determining the judgment as judgment and the force which it has for determining the judgment as action; for every judgment is an action. It does not follow, because a motive determines the judgment as action, that it must also have determined it as judgment; the greater pleasure, it is BOOK I. CH. I. § 2. The special scope of Ethic. |