monism or the Ethics of Personality"; and from the way in which he lays about him he gives the impression that he is animated, less by the inspiration of a new discovery, than by an irrepressible suspicion that Intuitionism is the last word of Ethics, and yet that it is a very prosaic, humble, and unfashionable creed. The following passage, at any rate, sounds rather like an attempt to disown than to report Intuitionism: "Morality is reduced to 'simple' or ultimate ideas—such as Justice, Temperance, Truthfulness; these, it is claimed, have no history, and their a priori origin is the source of their absolute validity" (p. 184). It is a fact that when we reflect on the morality of men we find it contains norms of justice, temperance, truthfulness, etc.; but I know no Intuitionist who denies these virtues have had a history; and since the adoption by science of the historical and comparative method, I know no Intuitionist who deems that history unimportant; and if any Intuitionist ever claimed that the validity of these moral laws depended upon their a priori origin he was not a follower of Butler, and he has mistaken the accidental associations of the theory for its essential teaching. However these virtues may have originated, and whatever their history, the moral consciousness of to-day recognizes they have a right to us; and the Intuitionist accepts that claim of goodness to us as final and holds it cannot be "explained" or "accounted for" by anything which does not itself presuppose it. If in former times, under the influence of the controversy between Nativism and Empiricism, the centre of interest was transferred from the nature of moral distinctions to the manner in which they are known, Butler at any rate is free from this confusion, and among the representative Intuitionists of the present day—Martineau, for example—no trace of it will be found. The Intuitionism which Professor Seth rejects is largely an imaginary, where it is not an obsolete, theory. That he has entered with so little sympathy into the essential spirit of Intuitionism is perhaps evidence of a recoil from some narrow form of the theory.
Let us now turn to Professor Seth's own ethical doctrine. And first of all what is the problem to be solved? Here it is, clearly stated: "The real question of Ethics is not…: How do we come to know moral distinctions? but, What are these distinctions? What is the Moral Ideal—the single criterion which shall yield all such distinctions?…Short of such unity, philosophy cannot rest" (p. 187). Now this unitary principle Professor Seth finds in Self-realization. This is something of a truism, he admits (p. 204); for in our moral life we are conscious of impulses and solicitations of
