§ 60. The man of science and the man of culture. § 61. "Mere ideas" and the picture-psychology. §62. "Mere feelings." § 63. Science and an- thropomorphic prejudice. § 64. Truth and satisfied imagination. § 65. Error and lack of § 67. Knowledge and "communion with the di- vine". § 68. The motive of knowledge and the XVII. POETIC ILLUSION AND POETIC TRUTH. § 70. Poetry and religious experience. § 71. MORAL PHILOSOPHY CHAPTER I MORALITY-WHAT IS IT? § 1. The meaning of "morality". § 2. Obligation vs. choice. W HAT is it to be moral? In the following pages I shall give my answer to this question and endeavor to make its meaning clear. I shall assume that it is the reader's aim as well as mine to be moral. I shall assume also that he will agree with me, in the end if not in the beginning, in using the term "morality" to cover all that is important in human character and personality, which means, as I aim to show, that morality involves so much more than is commonly supposed. When a man claims to be a better player of bridge or billiards than I am, or a better historian or mathematician, or a more competent man of affairs, I can admit his claim without compunction or feeling of responsibility. These are fields in which I have assumed no special obligation of excellence. But when he claims to be more moral than I am, I must protest-at least if I respect myself. Or if I do make the verbal admission, it means that I am allowing him to use the term "moral" in what is for me a conventional sense. I admit perhaps that he is more respectable than I am while saying to myself that there is something better than re spectability. Yet this is not precisely what he means by being moral, as little as it is what I can let him mean. If we have found something better than morality it seems that the word has here been misplaced. In the end each of us is standing for something than which nothing can be assumed by him to be better. That something, that most important thing in life, I take to be the only true meaning of "morality". I make this point at the outset because there are some persons, in no sense immoral persons, for whom "morality" is a term of depreciation; such as the pious Christian who insists that mere morality, further described as "worldly”, is of little value for salvation; or the man of sensitive taste who contrasts morality with spiritual insight; or finally, perhaps the etymologist who reminds us that "morality", like the correlative term "ethics", is derived from a term meaning "custom". With all of these distinctions, however described, I am more or less in agreement. But to that against which the discrimination is made I will not give the name of "morality", preferring rather to describe it as a customary and conventional "righteousness". Etymology to the contrary, I shall locate the essence of morality precisely in its contrast to custom; following here the usage of the plain man who says that to appear in public without a collar is doubtless improper but surely not immoral. It may be asked why I have not avoided this danger of ambiguity by describing my subject-matter in other terms, such perhaps as "human nature" or "the meaning of life". My answer would be that in this field there are no unambiguous terms and that it is my purpose to offer what is known as moral philosophy. What is it, then, to be moral? As a formal definition I Loffer the following: morality is the self-conscious living of life. Stating this more simply and concretely, I say that to be moral is to know what you are doing. The moral man is the man who, so far as he is moral, knows what he is about, and the immoral man is, thus far, he who does not know. But by putting it in this fashion—which, however, states the gist of the matter most clearly to myself—I may be tempting some more fastidious reader to reject the answer once for all as vulgar nonsense. I will then try to put it more acceptably by saying that to be moral is to be thoughtful; to be conscious; which to me means to be selfconscious; to live one's life, if possible, in the clear consciousness of living. And to be thoughtful, intelligent, self-conscious-what is this but to be conscientious and responsible? Surely we seem to be close to morality now. On the other hand, to be thoughtful, always to know what you are doing, is to be critical; to live, not by habit and instinct, but by judgment and choice. For this conception of morality I might perhaps offer reputable authority by quoting those two famous sayings of Socrates, "Virtue is knowledge" and "Know thyself", and I might then call myself a disciple of Socrates. The trouble here is that there seems to be no moral philosopher who is not "a disciple of Socrates". It is from the Platonic Socrates, however, as he speaks in the "Apology" that I have taken the text for my title-page. Ὁ δὲ ἀνεξέταστος βίος οὐ βιωτὸς ἀνθρώπῳ. “The unexamined life is not fit for human living". The examined life-in other words, the critical life. The moral life, as I conceive it, is the examined life. Given the examined life, I say that nothing else is needed. O But I may also suggest what is meant by referring to the theory of aesthetic of Benedetto Croce. According to Croce, |