ethical becomes such when one knows somebody else accepts it—a process of moral legislation by majorities that leaves Hobbes nowhere. But "he now learns that the growth of society is but the generalization of the individual's ethical ought into society's conventional ought" (p. 534). Hence ethical rules are 'capable' of being embodied in the sanctions of society; "they are to have the publicity which attaches to the ethical sanction as such" (p. 534). The contradiction is obvious enough when we recall that at the outset the judgment could not be ethical unless it already had such publicity. Add that Mr. Baldwin finds the final and most significant conflict between individual and society to be precisely in the cases where the individual opposes his ethical judgment to those of others (see pp. 539-540 and p. 544), and we see how completely Mr. Baldwin has shifted his statement of the interpretation of the nature of publicity and generality.[1]
All these various contradictions summarize themselves in Mr. Baldwin's varying conceptions of the socius or social personality. There seem to be no less than three independent and incompatible views on this point. One of these goes back to identity of content, established by imitation. Any self is in so far a socius as it is built up by imitative appropriations from others. But on a more organic basis, the community self, or spirit, the sense of common interest, of a community of situation, in which all live, and of which their thoughts are interpretations, is the socius (pp. 30, 32, 47). The third view serves as a bridge to pass over from the first individualistic notion to the second highly socialized one. According to this, the socius is the common element in ego and alter. This is like the first view in that it begins with separate selves. It differs in that neither self as such is the socius, but simply the identity of content. It is like the second view in that the concept of the 'common' is used, but differs in that it
- ↑ Limits of space compel me to relegate to a footnote the fact that Mr. Baldwin has precisely the same contradiction concerning the relation of intelligence and the ethical. On one hand, the very nature of intelligence is to generalize, and hence to usher in the ethical, especially since the general as such is motor or dynamic. On the other, the intelligence occupies a lower plane, is 'private,' 'personal,' or, when named 'social,' is so named simply because it uses social forces for personal advantages, and is finally displaced by the ethical sentiment. I cannot work this out in detail; but the reader is referred to pp. 397, 398, 250, for the first position; and to pp. 321, 323, 327, 382, 527 for the second. On p. 515, both views are stated—one that intelligence tends toward selfish use, the other, that intelligence, as such, is generalizing process; and be it remembered, the 'general' is the only psychological criterion afforded for the ethical—a fact which does not prevent Mr. Baldwin from remarking that one cannot give reasons "for pronouncing conduct right" (p. 395; see also p. 535). Mr. Baldwin, indeed, appears to reconcile the genetic and the intuitive views by taking them both by turns.
