and Pietism.

even more significant than those of hedonism, Eudæmonism and involving at least one radically Rigorism and new group of conceptions. Among the Intuitionism. Greeks rationalism and hedonism alike are eudæmonistic. They aim to portray the fulness of life that makes "the happy man." In the ethics of Aristotle, whose synthetic mind weaves together these different strands, the Greek ideal finds its most complete expression as "the highminded man," with all his powers and trappings. But the great spiritual transformation which accompanied the decline of Greek culture and the rise of Christianity, brought with it a new moral sensibility, which finds in man no virtue of himself, but only through the grace of God.

"And the virtues themselves," says St. Augustine, "if they bear no relation to God, are in truth vices rather than virtues; for although they are regarded by many as truly moral when they are desired as ends in themselves and not for the sake of something else, they are, nevertheless, inflated and arrogant, and therefore not to be viewed as virtues but as vices."11

The new ideal is that of renunciation, obedience, and resignation. Ethically this expresses itself in pietism. Virtue is good neither in itself nor on account of its consequences, but because it is con

11 Quoted by Paulsen in his System of Ethics. Translation by Thilly, p. 69.

formable to the will of God. The extreme inwardness of this ideal is characteristic of an age that despaired of attainment, whether of pleasure or knowledge. To all, even the persecuted, it is permitted to obey, and so gain entrance into the kingdom of the children of God. But as every special study tends to rely upon its own conceptions, pietism, involving as it does a relation to God, is replaced by rigorism and intuitionism.

The former doctrine defines virtue in terms of the inner attitude which it expresses. It must be done in the spirit of dutifulness, because one ought, and through sheer respect for the law which one's moral nature affirms. Intuitionism has attempted to deal with the source of the moral law by defining conscience as a special faculty or sense, qualified to pass directly upon moral questions, and deserving of implicit obediences. It is characteristic of this whole tendency to look for the spring of virtuous living, not in a good which such living obtains, but in a law to which its owes obedience.

§ 84. This third general ethical tendency has thus been of the greatest importance in emphasizDuty and ing the consciousness of duty, and has brought both hedonism and rationalism to a recognition of its fundamental im

Freedom.

Ethics and
Metaphysics.

.

portance. Ethics must deal not only with the moral ideal, but also with the ground of its appeal to the individual, and his obligation to pursue it. In connection with this recognition of moral responsibility, the problem of human freedom has come to be regarded in the light of an inevitable point of contact between ethics and metaphysics. That which is absolutely binding upon the human will can be determined only in view of some theory of its ultimate nature. On this account the rationalistic and hedonistic motives are no longer abstractly sundered, as in the days of the Stoics and Epicureans, but tend to be absorbed in broader philosophical tendencies. Hedonism appears as the sequel to naturalism; or, more rarely, as part of a theistic system whose morality is divine legislation enforced by an appeal to motives of pleasure and pain. Rationalism, on the other hand, tends to be absorbed in rationalistic or idealistic philosophies, where man's rational nature is construed as his bond of kinship with the universe.

Ethics has exhibited from the beginning a tendency to universalize its conceptions and take the central place in metaphysics. Thus with Plato good conduct was but a special case of goodness, the good being the most general principle of

reality.12 In modern times Fichte and his schoo! have founded an ethical metaphysics upon the conception of duty.13 In these cases ethics can be distinguished from metaphysics only by adding to the study of the good or of duty, a study of the special physical, psychological, and social conditions under which goodness and dutifulness may obtain in human life. It is possible to attach the name of ethics, and we have seen the same to be true of logic, either to a realm of ideal truth or to that realm wherein the ideal is realized in humanity.

Customs, and

Institutions.

§ 85. A systematic study of ethics requires that the virtues, or types of moral practice, shall be The Virtues, interpreted in the light of the central conception of good, or of conscience. Justice, temperance, wisdom, and courage were praised by the Greeks. Christianity added selfsacrifice, humility, purity, and benevolence. These and other virtues have been defined, justified, and co-ordinated with the aid of a standard of moral value or a canon of duty.

There is in modern ethics a pronounced tendency, parallel to those already noted in logic and æsthetics, to study such phenomena belonging to 13 Cf. § 177.

12 Cf. § 160.

its field as have become historically established. A very considerable investigation of custom, institutions, and other social forces has led to a contact of ethics with anthropology and sociology scarcely less significant than that with metaphysics.

of Religion.

Interests of

Faith.

§ 86. In that part of his philosophy in which he deals with faith, the great German philosopher The Problems Kant mentions God, Freedom, and ImThe Special mortality as the three pre-eminent religious interests. Religion, as we have seen, sets up a social relationship between man and that massive drift of things which determines his destiny. Of the two terms of this relation, God signifies the latter, while freedom and immortality are prerogatives which religion bestows upon the former. Man, viewed from the stand-point of religion as an object of special interest to the universe, is said to have a soul; and by virtue of this soul he is said to be free and immortal, when thought of as having a life in certain senses independent of its immediate natural environment. The attempt to make this faith theoretically intelligible has led to the philosophical disciplines known as theology and psychology.14

14 Concerning the duty of philosophy to religion in these