Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 15.djvu/116

102 CRITICAL NOTICES: lectual ignorance and incapacity is in great part a result of indifference to social progress, and is thus moral in its source. His own social optimism made him an ardent and incessant worker, restlessly intent on thoroughness of thinking, impatient of abstractions and hazy generalisations, and scrupulous in his endeavour to attain accuracy of statement and reference as re- gards even the minutest details. But there was no hardness in his sense of duty. It was rather a buoyant and optimistic belief, springing from his living interest in human well-being and progress. For him the whole duty of man lay not in doing good things, but in doing them well, and from this deep moral conviction there passed into his life a courtesy, gentleness and frankness that seemed instinctive in its readiness and ease.' The memoir by Prof. Latta contains also, though in brief com- pass, a remarkably complete and thorough account of Ritchie's general philosophical position. In particular, he brings out very clearly the fundamental importance of ' the distinctions between the question of origin and that of validity, between historical and logical method, between fact and meaning, between picturing and conceiving '. ' Eitchie's whole thought was ruled by ' this dis- tinction 'and by the problems which it raises, and the special value of his work lies in this, that he did not merely reiterate and defend it as an abstract principle, but skilfully applied it to concrete questions in new and original ways.' For instance, ' in his dis- cussions of the problems of logic and theory of knowledge Eitchie continually urged the necessity of holding fast to the distinction between logical questions as questions of validity and psycho- logical questions as questions of fact or origin '. But ' the problems of ethics and politics were those to which Ritchie gave the best of his thought" ; and Dr. Latta proceeds to give a very full analysis of his most fundamental concep- tions in these departments. ' He regarded it as a fundamental error to separate ' ethics from politics ' or either of them from metaphysics.' ' In all Eitchie's thinking on these matters the governing idea is the conception of society. Social well-being is at once the ethical and the political ideal.' ' The validity of moral principles does not depend merely on society as fact, but ultimately proceeds from society as meaning. The ideal society, however, is not something cut off from the actual. It is the meaning of the society which appears and changes in actual history.' In this sense he emphasised 'the social ideal as the first principle of ethics and politics. This is what Eitchie meant when he preached " socialism " and described himself as a "socialist". He was not a doctrinaire socialist, nor did he ac- cept as a whole any of the numerous socialist systems of recent times. But he believed profoundly in the socialist attitude as against any form of individualism, empirical or a priori.' 'This " socialist " belief was also the foundation of his criticism of evolu- tionist theories in ethics and politics. They tend to ignore the