Page:Philosophical Review Volume 8.djvu/158

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142
THE PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW.
[Vol. VIII.

is the servant which ministers to sensibility. In this aspect, reason is subordinate to the matter upon which it acts; but it is, nevertheless, supreme, inasmuch as the matter does not effect the subordination of reason, but reason of itself and on its own principles undertakes the function of guiding inclination. The union of parts is not, however, a "mere federation in which the good of the whole is to be consulted only in order that the good of each may be properly conserved."[1] While it is true that the relation of parts is "the subordination of certain factors to certain higher ones," it is not merely this, since reason fixes the subordination on its own principles, and thereby does give distinctive character to man and constitute his real unity.[2] The unity is the expression of reason. Consequently for Butler there is no inconsistency in saying that virtue is constituted by reason, and is nevertheless the end of man's whole nature, and not simply the end of the highest part.

Kant, on the other hand, makes reason constitute morality in the sense that the supreme and only truly moral end is one which appeals to reason alone, toward the realization of which inclination can never work. Nevertheless, he finally recognizes, as has been remarked in another connection, that man is a sensible-rational being, and introduces a summum bonum, which is to be the concrete end of man in his complete self-unity. But what right has Kant to such a synthesis of happiness and moral good in the "complete end"? After the complete differentiation of "weal" from "good," making good dependent on law alone, how can these contradictory interests of sensibility and reason become organically connected? In the Analytic of Pure Practical Reason, Kant tells us that "no doubt our weal and woe are of very great importance in the estimation of our practical reason;" that "man is a being who, as belonging to the world of sense, has wants, and so far his reason has an office which it cannot refuse, namely, to attend to the interest of his sensible nature, and to form practical maxims, even with a view to the happiness

  1. Cf. Webster Cook, The Ethics of Bishop Butler and Immanuel Kant, p. 41. Univ. of Michigan, 1888.
  2. Loc. cit.