expect from the pragmatist attitude, and it does not relieve the book after all from the charge of its comparative failure to set up a definite picture of the attitude of the moral man, in our present transitional or would-be constructive age. Such a man, in common parlance, does not merely keep up with the procession, going in for its endless "formations" and "re-formations"; he seeks to lead it. And I do not think the book accounts for this. It would, in other words, have been even more edifying and more constructive if it had been less practical and less sociological. It is typical, of course, of much that is strong and valuable in the way in which American scholars and teachers are accustomed to present truth to their pupils, but there are, I think, aspects of ethical science that transcend altogether such immediate needs and purposes. One wonders, too, whether even the student should not have been given a greater respect for the great literature of the subject of moral philosophy than this manual—by its own procedure—encourages him to take.
W. Caldwell. |
McGill University.. |