VI. DISCUSSIONS. ETHICS FROM A PURELY PRACTICAL STANDPOINT. I HAVE read Mrs. Bain's interesting article on the above title in the July number of MIND. As she refers to some of my statements in illustration of the unpractical character of Neo- Kantian or Idealistic Ethics perhaps I may be permitted one or two words of explanation. It seems a pity that Utilitarians like Mrs. Bain should unwittingly misrepresent the Idealistic view. With all due allow- ance for the alleged obscurity of the writers who support it I cannot help thinking that if the opponents of that view had taken half as much trouble to understand it as its champions have taken to understand Utilitarianism this would not have been so. It seems especially a pity in a discussion of this kind, which is nothing if not serious, to insinuate any want of sincerity on either side. I do not know for instance why it should be hinted as it seems to be on p. 334 that Mr. Spencer is superior to Idealistic writers in not " pandering to received views ". I should have thought that a theory such as that of the Neo-Kantians, expressly disowning as it does all appeal to merely selfish interests, is much more opposed to the frankly egoistic basis of much of the popular and even religious teaching of the present time than Mr. Spencer's, which is at best a compromise between egoism and altruism. Pass- ing over this and speaking for myself alone, I shall state the issue raised by Mrs. Bain as it presents itself to me, and my reason for suspecting the claims of current Hedonism to be a good working theory in ordinary practice. Both Idealists and Utilitarians appeal to consequences as a test of conduct. It seems odd that Mrs. Bain should speak throughout as though the appeal to consequences were a monopoly of Utili- tarians. Idealists have always emphasised the point that conduct takes effect in a w r orld of concrete interests, and that its value must be tested by its tendency to further the supreme interest of human life, whatever that may be. They differ from Utilitarians in their way of conceiving of this supreme interest. Utilitarians say it is the greatest amount of pleasure ; Idealists say it is the development of a system of activities which depend for their value not on the amount of agreeable consciousness with which they are accom- panied, but on their harmony with an ideal of human life. It is
