Page:Philosophical Review Volume 1.djvu/113

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No. 1.]
REVIEWS OF BOOKS.
97

time. That this is Professor Dewey's meaning is clearly shown by his rejection of "alternate choice," and his reference to Martineau as its expounder (pp. 161, 166). We may conclude, I think, that he holds a species of determinism, in which consciousness is not merely a spectator, but a necessary link in the natural process whereby character is changed. In his treatment of character, or "realized character," Professor Dewey does not make it very clear whether he means it to exclude or include a man's "ideal of himself" On page 181, indeed, he seems to identify the two; but, if they are identical, it is difficult to see where remorse comes from; for remorse seems to be the judgment of the ideal self upon certain actions of the realized self. Or, does Professor Dewey mean to say that the character which chooses an action before its performance is no longer (thanks to that action) the character which judges it afterwards? If this be his meaning, it would be interesting to know just how the transforming influence is exerted. Is it due to outer or inner results, or both? To whom or to what does "the adopted end turn out not to be satisfactory, but, rather, unworthy and degrading"? Does the performance of certain acts awake in the performer a previously unrealized sense of dignity? If this be true, would it not follow that the way in which conscience is developed is by the performance of actions that are subsequently disapproved? in other words, that a man becomes good by doing evil? This is the exact reverse of the ordinary view.

In treating of "The Ethical World" (Part II), Professor Dewey deprecates " the habit of conceiving moral action as a certain kind of action, instead of all action so far as it really is action," and goes on to assert that "the moral world is, here and now" (p. 167). But when we speak of a certain kind of actions as moral, do we not employ "moral" in a sense different from that implied by it in the expression "moral world"? Few persons would deny that the "moral world is here and now"; but most persons would deny that all actions are moral, unless, indeed, 'action' be used in a very unusual sense, — as moral action. When we say 'moral world,' we mean a world in which moral action is possible; when we say ' moral action,' we mean action in which morality is realized. Realized morality is virtue. Now there are such things as virtuous acts; but no one would say that the world is virtuous.

The type of the moral world is a great co-operative factory, and is maintained "by the free participation therein of individual wills." This maintenance is the common good, which gives concreteness to freedom. A moral law stands on the same footing as a natural law, being "no more merely a law of what ought to be than is the law of gravitation. As the latter states a certain relation of moving masses to one another,