Winds Of Doctrine: Studies in Contemporary OpinionSantayana, George
Philosophy
Winds Of Doctrine: Studies in Contemporary Opinion
Santayana, George
Philosophy, Modern
what we say. We seem to regain our intellectual birthright when we are
allowed to declare our genuine intent, even in philosophy, instead of
begging some kind psychologist to investigate our "meaning" for us, or
even waiting for the flux of events to endow us with what "meaning" it
will. It is also instructive to have the ethical attitude purified of
all that is not ethical and turned explicitly into what, in its moral
capacity, it essentially is: a groundless pronouncement upon the
better and the worse.
Here a certain one-sidedness begins to make itself felt in Mr.
Russell's views. The ethical attitude doubtless has no _ethical_
ground, but that fact does not prevent it from having a _natural_
ground; and the observer of the animate creation need not have much
difficulty in seeing what that natural ground is. Mr. Russell,
however, refuses to look also in that direction. He insists, rightly
enough, that good is predicated categorically by the conscience; he
will not remember that all life is not moral bias merely, and that, in
the very act of recognising excellence and pursuing it, we may glance
back over our shoulder and perceive how our moral bias is conditioned,
and what basis it has in the physical order of things. This backward
look, when the hand is on the plough, may indeed confuse our ethical
self-expression, both in theory and in practice; and I am the last to
deny the need of insisting, in ethics, on ethical judgments in all
their purity and dogmatic sincerity. Such insistence, if we had heard
more of it in our youth, might have saved many of us from chronic
entanglements; and there is nothing, next to Plato, which ought to be
more recommended to the young philosopher than the teachings of
Messrs. Russell and Moore, if he wishes to be a moralist and a
logician, and not merely to seem one. Yet this salutary doctrine,
though correct, is inadequate. It is a monocular philosophy, seeing
outlines clear, but missing the solid bulk and perspective of things.
We need binocular vision to quicken the whole mind and yield a full
image of reality. Ethics should be controlled by a physics that
perceives the material ground and the relative status of whatever is
moral. Otherwise ethics itself tends to grow narrow, strident, and
fanatical; as may be observed in asceticism and puritanism, or, for
the matter of that, in Mr. Moore's uncivilised leaning towards the
doctrine of retributive punishment, or in Mr. Russell's intolerance
of selfishness and patriotism, and in his refusal to entertain any
pious reverence for the nature of things. The quality of wisdom, like
that of mercy, is not strained. To choose, to love and hate, to have a
moral life, is inevitable and legitimate in the part; but it is the
function of the part as part, and we must keep it in its place if we
wish to view the whole in its true proportions. Even to express justly
the aim of our own life we need to retain a constant sympathy with
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