A Study of Ethical Principles

"In no direction has the idea of evolution been more fruitful than in the stimulation of speculation and discussion in the region of ethical thought. This is natural, for none of the forms of this now dominant mode of viewing physical and psychical phenomena can be completely harmonized with the old-fashioned forms of ethical theory; and hence moral philosophers of all schools have had to largely revise their basal conceptions. The empirical ethics of half a century ago has become the evolutionary ethics of to-day; and while intuitional ethics still maintains its ground in a somewhat modified shape, it is evident that a large proportion of thinkers of the mental type which in the last generation found satisfaction in intuitionism have now transferred their allegiance to the "idealist" or Hegelian school of ethical thought. The extremely interesting and valuable " Study of Ethical Principles," now before us, betrays on nearly every page the influence of Hegelian thinking; but while much of the force and beauty of the book is undoubtedly to be traced to this source, the author, like his brother, Professor Andrew Seth, has been led by independent thought to the rejection of the more essential articles in the Hegelian creed. As has frequently been pointed out, Hegel and his followers have done immense service in emphasizing and developing certain fertile ideas, such as the immanence of the universal in the particular, and the distinction between mechanical and final causation; these ideas, however, are neither the exclusive property nor the distinctive features of the Hegelian philosophy. In Professor Seth's work, these great and influential thoughts, which are rather Platonic and Aristotelian than especially Hegelian, are expounded and unfolded with much lucidity and grace. The attractiveness of the book is also enhanced by the writer's wide culture and power of expression, which have enabled him to find apt and beautiful illustrations and confirmations of his views in many of the masterpieces of the world's literature. "The essential difference between Professor Seth's ethical theory and that of the Hegelians is that in his work the individual self or spirit is credited with that noumenal or metaphysical reality, and that free power of causal action over its own states, which are denied to it in the several treatises on the principles of ethics which have recently been put forth by faithful disciples of T. H. Green and the brothers Caird. The one troublesome element in man's moral nature, which the fascinations of Spinozistic or Hegelian monism can never wholly silence, is the consciousness of free-will, - the conviction, that is, that we and others are fitting subjects of praise or blame because, and only because, in those crises of oar moral history which we call times of temptation, it was freely open to us to have formed a different decision from that which we actually did form. Of course if free-will, in the ordinary sense of that word, is a fact, it follows that the supposed unbroken causal continuity in the development of human character which is the feature in Hegelianism that makes it so attractive to the exclusively scientific mind, and to those philosophical thinkers in whom the logical or intellectual interest is the supreme one, must be regarded as a false assumption; the imposing structure of Hegelian monism, accordingly, falls to pieces, and needs to be replaced by a Weltanschauung, which can satisfy the demands not only of the intellect but of the conscience also...." -The New World, Volume 4