THE ETHICS OF FOUR PHILOSOPHERS.*
Miss E. E. CONSTANCE JONES, the distinguished Lecturer on Philosophy at Girton College, !Cambridge, has admir- ably performed a most useful task in the preparation for publication of the late Professor Sidgwick's critical lectures on the ethical views of the late Professor Green, the late Dr. James Martineau, and Mr. Herbert Spencer, happily still with us. Miss Constance Jones, in addition to the necessarily severe task of editing these lectures, has prefaced the edited text with a full and extremely valuable analytical summary, which, had it been in larger print, would have been even more acceptable. A volume-of this kind appeals, from the closeness and severity of its thought, and, we are sorry to say, from the cumbrousness of its terminology, to a compara- tively limited class of readers. Moreover, those who do not believe that it is possible to construct a philosophy of ethics, or who believe that such a philosophy when con- structed is totally valueless, form two classes that absorb a very large proportion of those who are competent to read works of this character. The analysis of motives will, how- ever, continue to fascinate a certain class of mind, and to that class the philosophic battles here fought out with all the fierceness of primitive man will vividly appeaL Professor Sidgwick in these lectures lays about him with an intellectual vigour all his own, and the attacks on Mr. T. H. Green are in reality one more tribute to the late Tutor of Balliol, whose philosophic work, be it sound or unsound, is a particularly provocative stimulus to mental activity in others. Professor Green was, however, at least as tren- chant as Professor Sidgwick, though both men were in private life of singularly sweet and gentle natures, and had he been living his reply to the prophet of intuitional utili- tarianism would have made good reading. But, alas ! both combatants have passed beyond the bourne of mortal things, and there will be no more logomachy between them.
Green and Sidgwick are at one on the point that "know- ledge of what ought to be" is "irreducible to knowledge of what is, has been, and will be," and both disagree with Spencer, since he endeavours to "establish Ethics on a scientific basis,"—namely, to express "what ought to be" in terms of "what is, has been, and will be." But Green and Sidgwick fall asunder in considering the relation of the two. Green wishes to throw ethics back upon metaphysics, and to base his ethical system on the alleged fact that the intellect in its capacity of knowing is not part of the Nature that it knows. Sidgwick, on the other hand, believes that the development of the Practical Reason "so far as it is exhibited in the morality of different ages and countries" can be traced, though the development itself cannot be completely explained. He denies that Green's ethics can gain the necessary support from the con- nection between ethics and metaphysics. To Green (as to Sidgwick) naturalistic ethics seemed an inadequate basis for current morality. Green considered that he had a right to assume that God is all that the human spirit is capable of becoming, and that this conception of God is "an ideal of personal holiness" with which each man can contrast his own un- worthiness. In fact, there is a standard of morality outside man by which man can measure his own moral stature. But how can this standard be known philosophically P Green answers that there is no such thing as self-combining in Nature, and that as in man there is an "intelligent self which unites the objects of his experience while distinguishing itself from them," so there must be a unifying, self-dis tinguishing consciousness that exists in relation to Nature at large as the personality of man exists towards man. Pro- fessor Sidgwick attacks this conclusion as passing from the affirmation of analogous action to the affirmation of identical
• Lectures on ti,. Ethics of T. H. Green, Mr. Herbert Spencer, and .T. Martineau. By Henry Sidgwick. sometime Knightbridge Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Cambridge. London : Macmillan and Co. [8s. Sd. net.1 quality. But assuming that the universe is inconceivable without a self-distinguishing thinker, how, asks Professor Sidgwick, are we to get out of this thinker an "ideal of holiness "P There is a logical gap to be filled. It must at any lute be admitted, if it can be filled (and Green must have believed that it could be filled), that the metaphysical basis of ethics is at least more satisfying to the Practical Reason, since it tends to bring philosophy into line with revealed religion, than the scientific basis of ethics, which must eventually throw us back on the, unknowable. Where great doctors of philosophy differ, and differ with a pungent acridity that makes the common man a little less ashamed of his own personal irritability in daily argument, it is presumptuous for a mere critic to express a view. There is, nevertheless, a considerable temptation to hold—inas- much as we have as much right to believe in the " real " character of qualities (such as, let us say, " patience ") as in the "real" character of the ultimate atom—that the " com- bining agency" which, by hypothesis, gives self-dis- tinguishing attributes to Nature possesses the " real " moral qualities equally with the other more apparent, but not more "real," realities of the so-called natural universe. The whole value of ethics to the common and unphilosophic man would seem to be the establishment of the real character of qualities. If those qualities exist in an external standard, man can measure himself by them. But the common man has to part from Green when the philosopher asserts that the spirit of man is merely a portion of the spirit of God, for if God "is eternally in reality all that the human spirit is in possibility," we must feel with Professor Sidgwick that "the process of man's moral effort is surely futile if it is to end in nothing but the existence of that which exists already." Green would reply to this that it is necessary to conceive both a perfect God and an im- perfect world designed to bring about some good as yet unrealised, despite the fact that God has already realised all things. Such palpable inconsistencies should not, says Pro- fessor Sidgwick, be made the basis of a philosophy of prac- tice. "For the purposes of Ethics we have to suppose that the world on which we have to act is somehow, in some sense, rationally and rightly conceived as imperfect." But it would seem that the difficulty in which Green as a transcendentalist found himself is really more verbal than real. It may be true that the moral efforts of man cannot add to the moral quali- ties of the universe, but they can secure the proper distribu- tion of those qualities,—a thing that may be as essential to the universe as a particular distribution of energy. It is, however, dangerous to express an opinion on these high matters.
We must say one word as to Dr. Afartineau's view of ethics. He regards the subject "as properly psychological, based on the study of the moral consciousness, as each individual finds it by introspection." Professor Sidgwick considers that "an unwarranted assumption underlies Martineau's whole proce- dure. He professes to give first the ' story ' that the moral consciousness 'tells of itself,' or 'what the Moral Sentiment has to say of its own experience.' And he appears generally to entertain no doubt that there is one and the same story ' to be told in all cases; that if the same question be definitely put to the moral consciousness of any number of different individuals, they will definitely return the same answer as his own. I think this an unwarranted assumption." Professor Sidgwick agrees with Martineau that "we have
an irresistible tendency to pass judgments of right and wrong," and that in doing so with respect to one- self we acknowledge a sense of obligation, and that this moral 3udgment affirms objective truth valid for all similar persons in similar circumstances. But he cannot agree with Martineau that this idea of duty necessarily implies the recognition of "another Person" who has authority over us. Martineau, in fact, adopts the position that Austin adopted in respect to law, while Sidgwick refuses to admit the assumption of a law- giver as necessary. If we may argue from the criticism to which Austin exposed himself by neglecting the existence of customary and binding laws proceeding from no lawgiver, Sidgwick appears to hold a stronger position than Martineau. But Martineau, like Green, appeals to the Practical Reason very vividly, since his philosophy has much in common with revealed religion, and the mind feels therefore that it is not
driven with Monimus the Cynic to declare that beyond opinion there is nothing. On the other band, Professor Sidgwick's philosophy is in many respects the philosophy of Christianity, and recognises the wilfulness of sin and the deliberate choice of good.
A considerable number of our readers will, we doubt not, pursue many of these interesting questions for themselves in this book, which will be found to be well edited, closely reasoned, intensely suggestive, and to a certain class of philo- sophic doubters very helpful. The application of this form of philosophy to life at large is, we suppose, a counsel of perfection.
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