ETHICAL.
The author discusses Sidgwick's three moral principles, justice, rational benevolence, and prudence, showing that Schopenhauer comes to almost the same conclusion when he investigates the metaphysical basis of morality. Schopenhauer regards justice and charity, the two all-embracing virtues, as based upon pity. When pity prevents us from harming others, we manifest the virtue of justice; when the same feeling prompts us to relieve the sufferings of others, we manifest the virtue of charity. When we turn to Sidgwick's principle of prudence, there seems to be a distinct opposition between the two moralists under consideration. Schopenhauer, however, deduces the falsity of the immoral man's idea, of the wide difference between man and man, from the Kantian doctrine of the ideality of space and time, and thus ultimately derives his virtues of justice and charity from the metaphysical doctrine. If, however, we start from the ideality of time, we must in the same way deduce Sidgwick's principle of prudence, which prescribes the ignoring of all differences of time in estimating our own present and future good. So that the doctrine of Kant, from which Schopenhauer deduces the virtues of justice and charity, must also lead to the rationality of Sidgwick's principle of prudence; and, though Schopenhauer would refuse to recognize this as a moral principle, he would at any rate be logically bound to admit that it is rational.
Philosophy may be expected to throw some light on the general aims of human life, and therefore on the results that it is the business of education to realize. Psychology, on the other hand, may be expected to throw some light on the general nature of mental development, and therefore on the methods of education which are likely to prove most useful. In each case, the assistance is likely to be rather general than specific. Philosophy, as the discussion of what is ultimately true or real, bears on education both as a criticism of the subject-matter which it seeks to impart, and again as a criticism of the type of life which it seeks to develop. It is the latter aspect of the subject with which the author is mainly concerned. Philosophical reflection on the aims of human life leads us to see that neither 'culture' nor 'utility' furnishes a complete and satisfactory educational ideal, and to recognize the futility of the antithesis between these two ideals, even when the antithesis presents itself in the more subtle form of opposition between the good of the individual, and the good of society. The more clearly we grasp the philosophical conception of the vital relation of the individual to the social whole, the more shall we realize the futility of a culture which is not socially useful, and of a social utility which does not involve culture.
