From this point of view we are enabled to identify the two senses of motive already discussed—the ideal of action and the moving feelings. Apart from each other they are abstractions. Cæsar's motive in crossing the Rubicon may have been 'ambition,' but this was not some bare feeling. It was a feeling of ambition produced in view of the contemplation of a certain end which he wished to reach. So a boy's motive in striking a playmate may be anger, but this means (if the act is anything more than one of blind physical reaction) an anger having its conscious cause and aim, and not some abstract feeling of anger in general. The feeling which has its nature made what it is by the conceived end, and the end which has ceased to be a bare abstract conception and become an interest, are all one with each other.
Morality is then a matter pertaining to character—to the feelings and inclinations as transformed by ends of action; and to conduct—to conceived ends transformed into act under the influence of emotions. But what kind of character, of conduct, is right or realizes its true end? This brings us to our first problem.
PART I.
FUNDAMENTAL ETHICAL NOTIONS.
Chapter I.—THE GOOD.
IX.
Subdivision of Theories.
We may recognize three main types of theories regarding the good, of which the first two represent (we shall attempt to show) each respectively one side of the truth, while the third combines the one-sided truths of the other two. Of the first two theories one is abstract, because it tends to find the good in the mere consequences of conduct aside from character. This is the hedonistic theory, which finds the good to be pleasure. This is either individualistic or universalistic according as it takes individual or general pleasure to be the good. The second type of theories attempts to find the good in the motive of conduct apart from consequences even as willed; it reduces the good to conformity to abstract moral law. The best type of this theory is the Kantian. We shall criticize these theories with a view to developing the factors necessary to a true moral theory.
X.
Hedonism.