[143] In this connection reference may be made to Mr. Taylor's recent work, The Problem of Conduct. Mr. Taylor reduces the moral life to terms of an ultimate conflict between the ideals of egoism and social justice, holding that the conflict is in theory irreconcilable. With this negative attitude toward current standards in ethical theory one may well be in accord without accepting Mr. Taylor's further contention that a theory of ethics is therefore impossible. Because the "ethics of subsumption" is demonstrably futile it by no means follows that a method of ethics cannot be developed along the lines of modern scientific logic which shall be as valid as the procedure of the investigator in the sciences. Mr. Taylor's logic is virtually the same as that of the ethical theories which he criticises; because an ethical ideal is impossible, a theory of ethics is impossible also. One is reminded of Mr. Bradley's criticism of knowledge in the closing chapters of the Logic as an interesting parallel.
[144] Mr. Bosanquet's discussion of the place of the principle of teleology in analogical inference will be found suggestive in this connection (Logic, Vol. II, chap. iii).
[145] See above, p. 243 and p. 259 ad fin.
[146] We use the expression "energy-equivalent" because the "excess" gained by the self through the past adjustment is not of importance at just this point. The essential significance of the means now is not that they "cost" less than they promised to bring in in energy, but that because they required sacrifice the self will now lose unless they are allowed to fulfil the promise. They are the logical equivalent of the established modes of consumption from the standpoint of conservation of the energies of the self, not the mathematical equivalent.
It would be desirable, if there were space, to present a brief account of the psychological basis of the concepts of energy and energy-equivalence which here come into play, but this must be omitted.
[147] Putting it negatively, the renunciation of the new end involves a "greater" sacrifice than all the sacrifices which adherence to the present system of consumption can compensate.
[148] Green, as is well known, allows that any formulation of the ideal self must be incomplete, but holds that it is not for this reason useless. But this is to assume that development in the ideal is never to be radically reconstructive, that the ideal is to expand and fill out along established and unchangeable lines of growth so that all increase shall be in the nature of accretion. The self as a system is fixed and all individual moral growth is in the nature of approximation to this absolute ideal. This would appear to be essentially identical in a logical sense with Mr. Spencer's hypothesis of social evolution as a process of gradual approach to a condition of perfect adaptation of society and the individual to each other in an environment to which society is perfectly adapted—a condition in which "perfectly evolved" individuals shall live in a state of blessedness in conformity to the requirements of "absolute ethics." For a criticism of this latter type of view see Mr. Taylor's above-mentioned work (chap. v, passim).
[149] For Green's cautious defense of conscientiousness as a moral attitude see the Prolegomena to Ethics, Book IV, chap. i; and for a statement of the present point of view as bearing upon Green's difficulty, see Dewey, The Study of Ethics: A Syllabus, p. 37 ad fin., and Philosophical Review, Vol. II, pp. 661, 662.
[150] Along the line thus inadequately suggested might be found an answer to certain criticisms of the attempt to dispense with a metaphysical idea of the self. Such criticisms usually urge that without reference to a metaphysical ideal no meaning attaches to such conceptions as "adjustment," "expansion," "furtherance," and the like as predicated of the moral acts of an agent in their effect upon the "energetic" self. Anything that one may do, it is said, is expansive of the self, if it be something new, except as we judge it by a metaphysical ideal of a rightly expanded self. For an excellent statement of this general line of criticism see Stratton, "A Psychological Test of Virtue," International Journal of Ethics, Vol. XI, p. 200.
[151] The polemic of certain recent writers (as, for example, Ehrenfels in his System der Werttheorie) against the objectivity of judgments of value appears to rest upon an uncritical acceptance of the time-honored distinction between "primary" and "secondary" qualities as equivalent to the logical distinction of subjective and objective. Thus Ehrenfels confutes "das Vorurteil von der objectiven Bedeutung des Wertbegriffes" by explaining it as due to a misleading usage of speech expressive of "an impulse, deep-rooted in the human understanding, to objectify its presentations" and then goes on to say "We do not desire things because we recognize the presence in them of a mysterious impalpable essence of Value but we ascribe value to them because we desire them." (Op. cit., Bd. I, p. 2.) This may serve to illustrate the easy possibility of confusing the logical and psychological points of view, as likewise does Ehrenfels's formal definition of value. (Bd. I., p. 65.)