OF THE GOOD. 251 



and by some of those influenced by him, among whom 

 I have specially noticed the lucid expositions of 

 Professor Sorley. 



Similar good work in clearing the atmosphere and 

 bringing home to thinking readers of a larger class 

 the ethical problems of the day, has been performed 

 .in Germany by several writers of eminence — by none 

 better, as it seems to me, than by the late Professor 

 Friedrich Paulsen of Berlin. Although more explicit 73. 

 than the two English authors just mentioned in the Etwcs. 

 enunciation of his own ethical standpoint, which he 

 has in fact expounded in a ' System of Ethics,' ^ he 

 nevertheless shows a very clear and impartial under- 

 standing of the two positions open to the ethical 

 philosopher of to-day. Of this he has given proof in 

 the latest of his writings : the chapter on Ethics con- 

 tained in a volume entitled ' Systematic Philosophy,' 

 which forms a section of a large encyclopcedic work 

 with the general title of ' The Culture of the Present 

 Age' (1907). In this short but well - filled chapter 

 Paulsen shows that ethical philosophy, what I have 

 termed the systematic treatment of the problem of 

 the Good, may start from two independent facts — the 

 fact of the Will, which strives to attain something ; and 

 the fact of the Ought, the obligation or duty imposed 

 upon human action. The former beginning leads us 

 to define the Good as the end of our actions, and in 

 a more detailed treatise the Good would divide itself 

 up into a number of separate goods or good things, 

 corresponding to the many - sided nature of human 



1 ' Ethik ' (2nd ed., 2 vols., 1893 ; trans, by Thilly, 1899). 



