dividualism contends that psychology should "undertake to exploit the individual, in order that the individual may find his place in the world and assert his position in the social order." We are in need of a Socrates to guide us to a higher truth.
Some explanation of terms employed by Professor Shaw is perhaps needed. "Scientism" and "sociality " are used to describe the prevailing modes of thought which have resulted from naturalism. "Scientism," unlike legitimate science, "attempts to deduce a life-ideal from the organized data peculiar to the inorganic and organic worlds" (p. 198). Science, as such, may perfect the principles of physics, chemistry, and biology "without any philosophical or poetical interference or criticism." Similarly, "sociality" is employed to designate the industrial and institutional order. It falsely regards these as adequate and authoritative interpretations of humanity. But humanity is, for Professor Shaw, a far richer term than society; it includes all the values and ideals revealed by individual experience.
The immediate protest against naturalism was offered by the æsthetic spirit, which has stood for the "joy of life." "If to be rational, the mind was called upon to be 'scientific,' the command of æstheticism was 'Be irrationalistic!' If, in order to be moral the will was expected to be 'social,' the exhortation of æstheticism was 'Be immoralistic'" (p. 67). The maxim, "Art for art's sake," with whatever abuses it has involved, has therefore to be charged to the account of naturalism. The revolt of æstheticism has been in essence a "eudæmonistic revolt." The justification of this emphasis upon æsthetic enjoyment is, we are told, that a man's joys are uniquely his own "because he has made them his own," whereas naturalism views them as the product of the physical order. Disinterested judgments of beauty rise "above the rank of mere occurrences," and so are "cleansed" of all immediate sensations and feelings. The extravagancies of the æsthetes, of whom Baudelaire is the type, are frankly acknowledged, but are justified by the necessity of asserting the claims of individualism. Even the morbid, it is said, may be valuable for this purpose by expressing "the unrecognized possibilities within the soul of man."
Immoralism and irreligion are also to be regarded as revolts against the submergence of the individual. Neitzsche linked together "self-development within" and "sin without." Semitic and Aryan tradition, it is pointed out, here unite. The story of Eve and the myth of Prometheus both make enlightenment depend upon disobedience. Dostoievsky is the great prophet of this view, but Emerson, earlier
