THE PROBLEM OF CONDUCT. 4 TRE importance of this work—in its
embryo stage it obtained the Green Moral Philosophy Prize in the Uni- versity of Oxford for the year 1899, when the topic proposed to the competitors was "The Reciprocal Re- lations between Ethics and Metaphysics "—seems to us to consist in the fact that it bears evidence to a change now visibly in progress in the tendencies of thought in this country. The broader and truer conceptions of the universe, of Nature, and of our social development to which the evolutionary hypothesis in its many applications has given rise are beginning to tell in those spheres of thought which concern themselves with the problems of ethics and metaphysics. The long reign of the "Metaphysical Moralists," who attempted what, to the devotee of science on the one hand, as to the possessor of religious faith on the other, so often appeared to be the task of making bricks without straw, shows some signs of coming to an end. For the burden of Mr. Taylor's skilful analysis of the problem with which he deals is, in effect, that the indispensable prerequisite in the future of serious meta- physical criticism in ethics, as in all other departments of human knowledge, is a phenomenology. He attempts to show, that is, that ethics is as independent of metaphysical specula- tion for its principles and methods as any of the so-called natural sciences, and that its real basis must be sought not in philosophical theories about the nature of the Absolute or the ultimate constitution of the universe, but in the empirical facts of human life from concrete experience sifted and systematised by the sciences of psychology and sociology. Mr. Taylor makes, we regret to say, little or no con- tribution himself to a constructive phenomenology of ethics. Skilful, incisive, even profound in parts, as is his analysis of the principles of conduct, it is never entirely free from the 'dis- tinctive badge of what may be called, without disrespect, the pre- scientific period of his subject. It is, in many places, sicklied o'er with the pale cast of the introspective method Like Condorcet, Mr. Taylor often seems as if he imagines that each of us can read the principles of social development in the workings of his own mind, or, like Schiller, that we have the key to the problems of humanity in the experience of the individual
To describe this feature, however, as characteristic of Mr. Taylor's work would be entirely to misrepresent it. Its dis- tinctive quality lies rather in the opposite direction. He sees perfectly clearly that in Plato's Republic, as indeed in all the philosophical systems of the ancient civilisations, there was no final reconciliation of the competing claims of self- culture and social justice. His examination of subsequent metaphysical theories goes also to show, in effect, that, to use his own words, "the theoretical assumptions upon which the moral view of life is based and the concepts with which it operates prove to be, in the last resort, composed of con- tradictory factors, the amalgamation of which into a consistent theory is finally unthinkable." Mr. Taylor seems to see clearly enough the relation which the religious life bears to these problems, and that religion itself, in the last resort, must be held "to rest upon a basis of compromises which do not admit of any real intellectual reconciliation." But he leaves us here, and no contribution is attempted towards that development of thought which seems to us bound to come as soon as we understand something of the true relations of the ethical and the religious life to those fundamental problems that underlie the development of humanity in society.
The main problem which Mr. Taylor enunciates is practi- cally :—" How far, and along what lines, is a consistent theory of the end of human action possible within the limits of ethical science P" In discussing this problem it is assumed
• I he eminent of Conduct, a Study in the Phenomenology of Ethics. By Alfred Edward Tiisior. London: Macmillan and Co. Rat. net.) that in all practical morality the aim of conduct is to make real some state of things which as yet exists only in an idea, and further, that the realisation of this " end " is to be brought about by the agency of the individual himself and other intelligent but finite and imperfect beings. Here we are in the presence of a characteristic concept, the antinomies involved in which become clear as soon as we have grasped the modern evolutionary position. We have, on the one hand, the individual concerned with his own limited welfare ; we have, on the other, the same individual posited in time and space with relations, through his conduct, to a process which is infinite. In such circumstances, if we could so transform our appre- hension of the world as to bring it into harmony with the standard concept of a " pure " experience, we should, as Mr. Taylor well points out, ipso facto, have got beyond morality. "For with the attainment of an experience completely adequate to the whole content of reality, and absolutely concordant with itself, the ideal types of psychical life would be merged in direct intuition." Hence the charac- teristically moral attitude of blaming and approving would find no place in such a pure or completed experience. This, we may observe, suggests Mr. Spencer's position in the chapter on " Conciliation " in The Data of Ethics. But Mr. Taylor gets further than Mr. Spencer. For it is, therefore, it is added with insight, precisely in transcending these states of mind that the religious experience shows itself to be a step nearer the ideal of a " pure " experience than the "ethics.!." This, it may be remembered, was the point of view in a well- known work which a few years ago dealt with the function of religion treated as the characteristic phenomenon of human society in the process of its evolution. It is in many respects also the standpoint in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. For the most part the conclusions which Mr. Taylor has reached in his analysis of metaphysical theeries and speculation, striking as they may appear to be in some respects, and conclusive as they undoubtedly are in emphasising his argument for a science of ethics founded upon the examination of the con- crete facts of the moral life, do not carry us beyond those reached in Kant's Transcendental Dialectic, or the Canon of Pure Reason. They are nearly all deducible from the positions there developed by Kant. Nay, we would go beyond this, and say that in both these subdivisions of the Critique Kant displays himself in closer touch with the fundamental problems of thought in its relations to conduct, as these problems are beginning to present themselves to the modern intelligence in the light of the evolutionary hypothesis, than does Mr. Taylor anywhere in his book. Nevertheless the work has its own standpoint, and judged as a whole it is a serious and important contribution to recent thought. It will tend, we think, to emphasise the tendency to return to Kant as to the starting-point from which modern thought is most likely to begin a new development along scientific lines. We should be inclined to recommend it as an excellent introduction to the study of Kant's Critique.
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