ism" is not exactly the position we expect to see adopted in the case of philosophers at work upon the discovery of the light thrown by the moral ideal upon our present economic distress. Analysis and experiment may be good practical politics, or good sociology, or they may indeed be the one need of the student of social questions, but they are hardly important results for ethical theory, or even for "Applied Ethics," for both of which all mere "setting free" and all mere "experimentation" and all "good living" even (but we do not seem to find much about this in the book), are subservient to an ethical ideal—to a "moral criterion of political activity." And it is this last thing that Professor Dewey himself admits to be the object of the Practical Part. I mean that many things might liberate and "set free" character and capacity, but they might not be ethical at all; and the fault alike of our Western (or American) civilization and the general Pragmatist outlook on life and morals is their eternal belief in "experimentation " and "setting free," instead of in the legitimacy or the illegitimacy of certain kinds of "experiments" that are unfortunately continually made with human life and with conduct and with morality. And it is conceivable, even from the point of view of mere theory, that Professors Dewey and Tufts would have done more alike for ethics and for American students, if they had stood somewhat more above the economic struggle of to-day than they have done, and surveyed it all from a really higher standpoint—along with other things like moral disease, and character-building, and education, and moral training, crime, punishment, etc., that naturally come up for discussion or consideration in the Practical or the 'Applied' part of a book upon ethics.
After what has been said or implied it is perhaps unnecessary to quote from the book to indicate its explicit or implicit acceptance of the Pragmatist conception of first principles and of morality itself: "The classical conceptions of moral theory are of remarkable importance in illuminating the obscure places of the moral life and in giving the student clues [italics mine] which will enable him to explore it for himself." ... "The aim has not been to instill the notions of a school or a ready-made system, but to show the development of theories out of the problems and experience of every-day conduct, and to suggest how these theories may be fruitfully applied in practical exigencies. "But how does this general attitude 'work' in the matter of opening up an unequivocal answer to the question of the moral standard or the moral criterion—the article of a falling or a standing moral philosophy? Professor Dewey himself recognizes that "the perplexities and uncertainties of
