Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 12.djvu/379

VI. THE PROBLEM OF CONDUCT. BY J. H. MUIBHEAD. MB. A. E. TAYLOR'S book The Problem of Conduct, a Study in the Phenomenology of Ethics has been so long before the readers of MIND that it seems superfluous to offer a review of it in the ordin- ary sense. I propose therefore in what follows to do no more than touch upon the contents of its several chapters as a prelimin- ary to some criticisms which an earlier perusal of it suggested to- me and the reperusal at the request of the Editor has only served to confirm. This must be my excuse if I should here seem to fail to do justice to the substantial merits of a striking book the courage and sincerity with which central problems are attacked and the brilliancy of the detailed expositions, amongst which that of the chapter on the " Goal of Ethics " and the last chapter carrying us "Beyond Good and Bad" are especially striking. The Introduction defines the relation in which according to the writer Ethics stands to Metaphysics. Science in general is there denned as having for its aim the more and more adequate render- ing of experience, in other words the freeing of our descriptions, from the symbolic elements that so largely enter into scientific hypothesis. As contrasted with this, Metaphysics has both a critical and a constructive side. It is critical in that it tests the various theories and propositions which pass for true in every-day thinking and in science by the ideal standard of a pure or perfect experience ; it is constructive in attempting to formulate the more general or formal conditions of experience. Should it then be claimed for any science as it is in Mr. Taylor's view by certain idealist writers for Ethics that it is dependent on and deducible from metaphysics, there are certain marks by which we may seek to test this claim, to wit: accurately defined limits and the absence of non-experiential elements which we cannot replace when desired by ' real ' equivalents. Tested by this standard the claims of Ethics to rank as a deductive science founded on a metaphysical basis fall to the ground. Though recommended to us by references to the authority of Avenarius and Cornelius the account here given of the logic of science will scarcely be recognised by those who accept what recent