spective of ethical theory there is indeed no place for them and they must appear as the very undoing of all coherent thought and purpose in conduct. But in the perspective of one who faces forward to a genuine problem and venture of conduct they take on a different aspect. They may be conveniently stated in the form of questions. First and last it should be observed that they renounce all thought or purpose of present judgment upon the specific sorts of conduct suggested to the individual as ways out of his perplexity. They look, instead, to the general character and status of the authorities, the impulsions, and the appellant persons by which the ways out are suggested. For, as a matter of principle, we can depend with full conviction, in a genuine problem, upon none of our tried and familiar principles of action. "To be virtuous," as Aristotle said, "... is not what anybody can do nor is it easy."[1] To allow these tried and familiar principles after all to intervene between the realities of our problem and ourselves is to move in a vicious circle. It is a mere lapse into indolence, which mistaken for a basic principle of ethical method renders moral and institutional progress incomprehensible.[2]
We have then, as regards authority, to ask (1) whether the person or institution thus addressing us speaks with its own voice and sincerely, without ulterior and hidden interest of its own or of a class or other person; (2) Is the authority presumably competent, whether by long experience in the field in question or by special training or by special endowment? a question covering
- ↑ Nicom. Ethics, Bk. II, Chap. IX.
- ↑ Thus, Max Scheler, in the most valuable recent study of sympathy and related phenomena that I know of, lays it down at the outset as a cardinal principle that "Es ist sicher nicht sittlich wertvoll z. B., mit der Freude, die Einer am Schlechten hat, oder mit seinem Leiden am Guten, das er vor sich sieht, oder mit seinem Hasse, seiner Bösheit, seiner Schadenfreude zu sympathisieren. ... Es ist klar dass sittlich wertvoll nur die Mitfreude mit einer Freude sein kann, die selbst in sich sittlich wertvoll ist und die von ihrem Sachverhalt, 'an' dem sie erfolgt, sinnvoll gefordert ist." [Zur Phänomenologie und Theorie der Sympathiegefühle, u. s. w., p. 2.) Naturally one does not wish to dispute such a statement taken as a mere formula or canon of verbal consistency in moral judgment. The vital question is, rather, the purely practical one as to when and how one gets the right to believe that the act or effort of another person or class springs from "Leiden am Guten," "Bösheit," and so on.
