Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/47

a man who insists in spite of all upon going to the real world, to find there in some way the sole basis for his ideal distinctions between good and evil, an ethical realist. Let us on the other hand call him who would somehow demonstrate if he could some ideal as the true and only moral ideal, without in any wise making it depend upon physical reality, a moral idealist. Let us then let the two parties discuss, in their opposing ways, the question at issue. Let us hear their views briefly stated and argued. First the view of the extreme ethical realists: “Go to reality,” they say, “and to whatever reality you need to consider. Thence derive your notion of duty. Morality must not be built in the air, but on a solid foundation of natural fact. Your moral doctrine may have to depend upon all that you can find out about the universe.” — On the other hand we have the idealistic doctrine: “Morality,” say the supporters of this view, “is for the first an ideal. From reality one learns the relations that are to be judged by the ideal, but cannot by any searching find the ideal itself. From reality one can learn the means; the End of action is an Ideal, independent of all reality save the bare existence of our choice of this End. As Prometheus defied Zeus, so the moral consciousness could and must defy the forces of nature in case they made the ideal forever hopeless. If the good be unattainable, that makes it no less the good. If the existent world were the worst world imaginable, it would not be justified by the mere fact that it was the real world. Ideals must be realized in so far as we can realize them, but what can be realized need