V. DISCUSSIONS. REPLY TO ME. MUIEHEAD'S CRITICISM. IN the January number of MIND, under " Discussions," Mr. Muirhead criticises my article " Ethics from a purely Practical Standpoint," which appeared in MIND of July last. He begins by broadly hinting that I have failed to understand the Idealist view, and attributes my non-comprehension to want of trouble bestowed upon the subject. Well, I have certainly not spent a great deal of time upon the study of Neo-Kantian and Neo-Hegelian Ethics, but I have given it what seemed to me a fair or sufficient amount of attention. If, in looking for bread, you have invariably found a stone, much prolonging of the search naturally seems to you a game which is scarcely worth the candle. Before considering the one instance which Mr. Muirhead specifies of my misconception of Idealism, I have to refer to his second objection, or rather grievance. He complains that when I said, with reference to Mr. Spencer's Ethics : "In reading it we perceive that we are to encounter no pandering to received views," I was hinting at its superiority in that respect to Idealistic writ- ings. In this assumption Mr Muirhead is wholly mistaken. However, as he refers to "religious teaching of the present time," apropos of received views, I may observe that I have repeatedly noticed, in members of the clerical body, a marked preference for Neo-Kantian and Neo-Hegelian Ethics, as compared with a " chilling utilitarianism ". It has seemed to me that the explana- tion was not far to seek. Being essentially vague and indefinite, the Idealistic Ethics were thoroughly safe : in no way calculated to disturb existing views and existing institutions. According to Mr. Muirhead, my misrepresentation of the Ideal- istic view consisted in my speaking as though Idealists made no appeal to consequences as a test of conduct. These, he adds, have been emphasised by Idealists. I have again searched the pages of his Elements of Ethics, but have found no emphasising, and only one sustained or more than passing allusion to the results of conduct ; while there is nothing said of the necessity of impress- ing these results as an inducement to right action. Not only so ; the consequences to which I referred in connexion with Mr. Muirhead' s list of virtues were the effects of conduct as conducive
