[Footnote 3: Appearance and Reality, pp. 412, 413.]
[Footnote 4: Ethical Studies (1876), pp. 59, 63.]
[Footnote 5: Appearance and Reality, p. 414.]
[Footnote 6: Appearance and Reality, p. 414.]
[Footnote 7: Ibid., p. 415.]
[Footnote 8: A.E. Taylor, Problem of Conduct (1901), p. 65.]
It is worth while considering this view of the contradictions inherent in morality. To start with, goodness was defined by relation to desire: the good was said to be what satisfies desire. Desire is plainly a mental state in which idea and existence are separated. As such it cannot be attributed to the Absolute Reality. It will involve a contradiction, therefore, if we identify goodness with Absolute Reality; for goodness implies a distinction (between idea and existence) which cannot find place in the Absolute. But if "degrees" of reality be asserted, we must admit stages short of the Absolute, and goodness may belong to such a stage in which process or development is allowed as a fact. But Mr Bradley will have it not only that it is a contradiction to identify this process with the Absolute, but also that the conception of goodness is itself contradictory. "A satisfied desire," he says, "is, in short, inconsistent with itself. For, so far as it is quite satisfied, it is not a desire; and, so far as it is a desire, it must remain at least partly unsatisfied."[1] Of course, if the desire is satisfied, it ceases. It was and it is not. But there is no more contradiction here than in any other case of temporal succession. A satisfied desire is, it is true, no longer a desire. But the phrase is contradictory only in appearance; for it means that the desire has been satisfied and in its satisfaction has ceased to exist as a desire. A much more important discrepancy is asserted when it is said that "two great divergent forms of moral goodness exist." The fight for moral goodness is 'under two flags'—self-assertion and self-sacrifice. And the allies "seem hostile to one another," "at least in some respects and with some persons."[2] We have here the time-honoured opposition of egoism and altruism, with a difference. Mr Bradley's most notable adherent in the region of ethical enquiry prefers to overlook the difference and to return to the older opposition of conflicting ideals.[3] But Mr Bradley himself declines to rate the social factor in conduct so high. It is not altruism or social activity which is the opponent of self-assertion or egoism, but self-sacrifice; and both self-assertion and self-sacrifice are kinds of self-realisation: in the former the self seeks its realisation by perfecting its harmony; in the latter, by increasing its extent. It is not in content that the two modes of self-realisation differ: social factors, for instance, may enter into both; it is in the diverse uses made of the contents:[4] 'system' is aimed at in the one; 'width' in the other.[5] The harmony of these two methods is attained only when both morality and the individual self are "transcended and submerged."[6]
[Footnote 1: Appearance and Reality, p. 410.]
[Footnote 2: Appearance and Reality, p. 415.]
[Footnote 3: Taylor, Problem of Conduct, p. 179 ff.]