The same contradiction comes out in Mr. Baldwin's treatment of the relation of publicity to ethical sense and sanction. Here, too, we have three incompatible views. The extreme, on one side, is found in the statement that "the developed ethical sense needs less and less to appeal to an alter self, an authority…" (p. 52). But this view stands alone till we come to the question of final ethical conflict. The chief confusion is between the concept of publicity in a quantitative sense, a matter of content, and as a process of interpretative construction of a social situation. That the ethical self must be, in my consciousness of it, a public self, is the proposition (p. 315). The quantitative interpretation comes out when Mr. Baldwin says "in case I know the action is quite private, quite secret, absolutely unknown to anybody else, then the full reinstatement of the conditions of an ethical judgment, is, ipso facto, not present " (p. 315). And, again, the thought that the judgment passed is actually in the mind of some other is necessary to a full ethical judgment as such" (p. 318; italics mine).[1] In spite of the undoubted help in both reinforcement and enlightenment, that we get from confession, or even from imagination of others as knowing of our proposed deed, this seems to me extraordinary doctrine as matter of fact—particularly as often our surest token that an intention is wrong, is our shrinking from having anybody else know of it; while according to these statements we could not really judge it wrong until we knew somebody else did know of it. But its correctness is not so much in question as its contrast with another view of publicity. This view emerges upon pp. 498, 499 (as well as pp. 438, 517, 532). According to this the appeal is to a "higher self already formed in my breast through social experience," through which I "anticipate." Its publicity is in its ideal reference, and this reference is accordingly to every agent; the quantitative generality follows from the quantitative; while, from the other point of view, publicity consists in actual possession of the same content by two or more agents. The doctrine now propounded is that just because the ethical self as such is general, its thought must be accepted and ratified by any self, whether you or me.
Naturally, when we come to ethical growth, the latter point of view dominates. According to the first conception, a thought originally not
<ref follow=p406>common to a number—a quantitative conception—and general because involved in the group as such). The crucial question is this: Is the idea which, as thought, is peculiar to the father, but which he insists upon having obeyed, general or not? If not, does it become general simply because others obey? Or, in so far as it is an interpretation of the interests of the group as such, is it, perforce, general from the start?
- ↑ See also p. 425. The passage on p. 435 is open to either interpretation.
