2. Chapters IV to VII.—These chapters on ethics as science and on ethical method do not appear to me to call for extensive notes. Several foot-notes are given which might be followed up. I think it would be a very good thing for the student to read chapters i and vi in Sidgwick's admirable work, The Methods of Ethics.
3. Chapters VIII to X.—To undertake to give any adequate list of references on the chapters which treat of man's nature and of his material and social environment would take us quite too far afield. I merely suggest looking up the articles on "Anthropology" and "Sociology" in the Encyclopedia Britannica. References are given there. And one should not overlook Darwin's great book on The Descent of Man. It will never be rendered superfluous, although the men of our day criticize it in detail. A recent work of value is "Heredity and Environment in the Development of Men," by Professor Edwin Grant Conklin, 1918.
4. Chapters XI to XVI.—Here my notes must be somewhat more detailed, for we are on quite debatable ground. At any rate, there is much dispute, between men of unquestionable ability, on the one side and on the other. I may be pardoned for thinking that the general argument of these chapters is reasonable and sound.
In commenting upon Chapter XI, I suggest that the reader look up what Hobhouse has to say on impulse, desire and will, in his volume, Morals in Evolution; also that he consult the same topics in James' Psychology. McDougall's Social Psychology might be read with much profit.
Some admirable writers have a repugnance to using the word "volition" in speaking of the brutes. I cannot help thinking that this is a dispute touching the proper use of a word, rather than that any important distinction in kind is marked. Some human volitions stand out very clearly as such. There are free ideas present, there is the tension of desires, there is deliberation, and there is clearly conscious choice, or the final release of tension. But how many of the decisions—I see no objection to the word,—which we make during the course of a day, are of this character! It would be difficult to set a lower limit to volition.
Muirhead, who writes, in his Elements of Ethics, clearly and well of desires, emphasizing the presence of "tensions," follows the Neo- Hegelian tradition in speaking of will. He describes it as the act by which the attention is concentrated upon one object of desire, and he calls the act of choice the identifying of oneself with one object or line of action.
Naturally, it is not easy to think of the bee or the ant or the spider, perhaps not even of the cat or dog, as "identifying itself" with some object of desire. I suggest that the reader, after a perusal of Muirhead, reflect upon what Hobhouse has to say of the lower animals; or that he look up Miss Washburn's book on The Animal Mind, (second edition, 1918), where a really serious study of the brute is undertaken.
On Chapter XII, I find no comment necessary. As to Chapter XIII, I recommend to the reader a reading or re-reading of the fascinating pages in which James treats of instinct in his Psychology. And let him look up the same subject in McDougall's Social Psychology. At the same time, I enter a note of warning against reading even such good writers uncritically. There is no little dispute in this field. Dr. H. R. Marshall's volume Mind and Conduct gives an unusually thoughtful account of instinct (N. Y., 1919).
Comment on Chapter XIV is not imperatively necessary. But I must speak with detail of Chapter XV, for the best of men quarrel when they come upon this ground:
Sec 49. The psychologist takes into his mouth no word more ambiguous than "feeling." It may be used to indicate any mental content whatever—John Stuart Mill could speak of consciousness as composed of a string of feelings. Herbert Spencer divided conscious processes into "feelings" and "relations between feelings." James obliterates the distinction, and finds it possible to speak of "a feeling of and, a feeling of if, a feeling of but," etc. (Psychology I, p. 154, ff.).