not equally true that a certain (at least modified) satisfaction with other activities or attainments is equally a fact of the moral consciousness?
This satisfaction or dissatisfaction would, therefore, seem to be the same expression of our moral consciousness as that which is variously spoken of as consciousness of worth, perception of good or evil, judgment of right or wrong, and called by many other names. And the "moral and intellectual experience," upon which both metaphysics and ethics are based, should be definitely recognized as including: (1) the judgments of fact, which form the basis of our understanding of the nature and connection of things; (2) the experience of desire and will, which compels us to regard reality as a process into which conscious beings enter as active; and (3) judgments of worth or goodness, which enable and compel us to set a value upon this process, and upon its constituent factors and processes, and which direct us to choose the good and to avoid the evil. All these enter into the experience which has to be expressed by a comprehensive philosophical conception; they form the material which it has to criticise, understand, and interpret.
W. R. Sorley |
University of Cambridge.. |