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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 February 2009
The two basic forms of action distinguished in the preceding articles, viz., moral action, where praxis is for praxis sake, and action for a good, where praxis is for the sake of theôria, are found in close relationship to one another in human life. The part they play is rather that of abstract moments in a practical process than that of self-contained and isolable bits of conduct. No philosopher is likely to discount the importance of thus analysing the concrete into its factors before he rectifies the abstraction by showing how they co-operate in actual experience. In any individual biography we can find acts and courses of action in which duty is the dominant motive, and others in which the dominant motive is desire of good. Similarly, when we compare different biographies with one another, some exemplify most strikingly the struggle for righteousness against unruly passion, others the spontaneous aspiration of the soul to attain the goal of its desire. But neither the moral law nor the summum bonum wields an exclusive sovereignty. St. Paul and Luther, in their warfare against carnal desire, drew strength from the ideal vision; nor were St. Bernard or Spinoza, for all their absorption upon union with the divine, strangers to the call of moral obligation. In the lives of ordinary men, the types of conduct are, perhaps, more evenly balanced; yet here also the distinction is discernible. Moreover, it is easy to see how, despite their intrinsic difference, they come to be associated and “by just exchange” to effect a mutual enrichment.
page 202 note 1 It may be added that duty itself, as we shall note presently, enjoins (amongst other things) promotion of good.
page 202 note 2 On these prima facie obligations, see Ross, , The Right and the Good, ch. ii, pp. 19 ff.Google Scholar
page 203 note 1 See Dr.Ross's, interesting remarks on this question (op. cit., concluding chapter, pp. 168–173).Google Scholar He criticizes the term “mixed motives,” substituting “the co-operation of elements to form a single motive.” He would, of course, reject the limitation under which in these articles I have spoken of “moral worth.”
page 203 note 2 See Alexander, Space, Time and Deity, Bk. IV, ch. ii, init. “Various emotions enter into the full constitution of the religious sentiment—fear, admiration, self-abasement—but its distinctive constituent is the feeling of our going out towards something not ourselves and greater and higher than ourselves, with which we are in communion, a feeling whose object is not that of any of these subsidiary or suggesting emotions, nor of any combination of them” (vol ii. p. 373).
page 204 note 1 The “numinous” object is not necessarily an object of worship. Any object of experience may arouse the sense of numinosity. We find it surviving, in civilized mankind, in the eerie feeling provoked, say, by a graveyard at night. For Kant, again, not only “the moral law within,” but the sublime in Nature ("the starry heavens above"), were charged with the numinous. A like impression would be produced by the magnificent and heroic in human personality and action, e.g. by a Cæsar or a Goethe, or the spectacle of Nelson bringing his fleet into action at Trafalgar, entirely apart from any religious, or even ethical, relevance. The cult among certain Hindus that gathered around John Nicholson after his death illustrates the transition to religious worship.
page 204 note 2 The recognition by the Greeks of a mysterious impersonal power (Atê Moira) behind Zeus may be regarded as a dim recognition of the inadequacy of any finite conception of the Unconditioned.
page 205 note 1 Bradley, , Ethical Studies, p. 231Google Scholar; cf. the concluding chapter, and especially p. 331. “Faith involves the belief (1) that the course of the external world, despite appearances, is the realization of the ideal will; (2) that on the inner side the human and divine are one. Or the belief (1) that the world is the realization of humanity as a divine organic whole; and (2) that with that whole the inner wills of particular persons are identified. Faith must hold that,
page 205 note 1 Bradley, , Ethical Studies, p. 231Google Scholar; cf. the concluding chapter, and especially p. 331. “Faith involves the belief (1) that the course of the external world, despite appearances, is the realization of the ideal will; (2) that on the inner side the human and divine are one. Or the belief (1) that the world is the realization of humanity as a divine organic whole; and (2) that with that whole the inner wills of particular persons are identified. Faith must hold that, in Biblical language, there is ‘ a Kingdom of God, that there is an organism which realizes itself in its members, and also in those members, on the subjective side, wills, and is conscious of itself, as they will and are conscious of themselves in it.”
page 206 note 1 Cf. Whitehead, , Religion in the Making, p. 37.Google Scholar “Religion is the last refuge of human savagery. The uncritical association of religion with goodness is directly negatived by plain facts.”
page 207 note 1 See Alexander's, remarks on this, Space, Time and Deity, vol. ii. pp. 404–405.Google Scholar He insists that it is wrong to “call such persons hypocrites, because their life seems incompatible with their religion,” and adds that “there is no good reason to doubt the sincerity and strength of the feeling towards God which they have.”
page 208 note 1 Carritt, E. F., Theory of Morals, p. 74.Google Scholar Is it probable that the goal followed unanimously by philosophers for more than two thousand years should prove a mere hallucination?
page 209 note 1 On this whole question see Sorley, , Moral Values of the Idea of God, pp. 139 ff.Google Scholar;and Taylor, A. E., The Faith of a Moralist, vol. i. ch. ii and passim.Google Scholar
page 210 note 1 Taylor, , The Faith of a Moralist, vol. i. p. 39.Google Scholar
page 210 note 2 See Sorley, , op. cit., pp. 52, 53.Google Scholar
page 211 note 1 See Taylor, , op. cit., vol. i. pp. 101 ff.Google Scholar