Page:Philosophical Review Volume 11.djvu/639

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THE PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW.
[Vol. XI.

and must have been generated in the race by the working of the social factor. Professor Ladd's statement that "social organization among men presupposes the feeling of moral obligation " is surely either ambiguous or untrue.

It is a drawback to Professor Ladd's discussion of Moral Freedom, that he has to refer the reader to one of his psychological writings for a general treatment of volition. And I may say that a similar reflection is frequently suggested by the references in the third division of the work to the author's more metaphysical writings. It would, of course, be unreasonable to expect Professor Ladd to repeat at length what he has already said elsewhere; and yet the reader too may not be wholly unreasonable if he feels somewhat aggrieved that he must either read the other works of the author or be content with an imperfect treatment of questions which the author himself regards as ethically important. And, in the case before us, I think that the omission of any clear statement of the author's general view of the nature of will and its relations to other psychological elements or processes constitutes a real defect. The chapter in which Moral Freedom is discussed runs to a very considerable length; but it is largely occupied, on the one hand, with a statement of the ethical facts which imply free choice, and, on the other, with a polemical examination of Determinism. I do not myself feel that I understand Professor Ladd's positive view of the nature of moral freedom clearly enough to allow me to criticise it. I should like, however, to mention specially one passage (pp. 174-175), in which he gives a very true and necessary warning against the hypostatization of the notion of Character.

The second division of the work opens with a chapter on the Classification of the Virtues. The subject is not in any case an easy one, and I think that in his consideration of it Professor Ladd has been somewhat unfortunately biassed by his 'psychological method.' He begins by rejecting the division of the virtues into self-regarding and social. This division is, of course, anything but a sharp or complete one, and Professor Ladd's chief criticisms upon it would probably be admitted without difficulty even by those who use it. On the other hand, one would think that to reject it altogether is just as impossible as to adopt it without qualification. Professor Ladd also refers, but only to dismiss it, to the mode of classification which "adopts as its principle the difference of objects upon which the virtuous conduct terminates" (p. 223). The classification which he adopts himself is, as I have mentioned above, a psychological one based upon the tripartite analysis of mind. Here Aristotle is again claimed as an exponent