140 DOGMATISM AND EVOLUTION 



distinctions of truth and error are reducible? Or ought a specific 

 type of satisfaction to be substituted for happiness, or satisfaction 

 in general? The question is, we think, of far-reaching impor 

 tance; and before attempting a direct answer we shall try to 

 make its bearing clear by means of a familiar parallel. 



The question is closely analogous to that which divided the 

 utilitarians and the moral-sense ethicists in the eighteenth cen 

 tury. Are the sentiments of moral approbation and disappro 

 bation, on the one hand, and that of benevolence, on the other 

 hand, to be explained as consequences of the anticipation of 

 pleasure and pain, produced by a psychical mechanism which 

 merely combines and separates the given elements of human 

 nature? Or are these sentiments qualitatively peculiar, native 

 endowments of humanity for which no derivation is to be found? 

 The alternative consequences for the development of the science 

 soon became apparent. The utilitarians, by reason of the very 

 simplicity of their primary assumptions, were committed to an 

 artificial theory, which did scant justice to their subject. It was 

 easy for the moral-sense theory to be far more appreciative, for 

 all difficulties of interpretation were solved for it in advance. 

 But for the same reason it was barren the future was closed 

 against it. The signal importance of the application of evolu 

 tionary methods to ethics during the last half-century is this, 

 that it has united the advantages of the two older schools. It 

 has permitted the recognition of the distinctive qualitative char 

 acter of moral values, while at the same time expediting the more 

 thorough investigation of the fundamental relations subsisting 

 between these and other human values. 



It is a position analogous to this last, that we should expect 

 to see taken by the pragmatists. But they have not taken it. 

 It is the dead level of utilitarianism that they have sought. 

 This is the more surprising, since all the materials for a synthetic 

 view would seem to be present to their hand. Mr. James, in 

 particular, recognizes the existence of a logical sense, that is 

 to say, a specific feeling of consistency. But of the theoretical 



