OF THE GOOD. 253 



has in recent philosophy, under the influence of a deeper 

 and wider view of the phenomena of Life, been developed 

 into a teleological and energetic conception of the moral 

 problem. This conception has received in Germany the 

 name of Voluntarism. In this country it has, under 

 the further influence of Professor William James, reacted 

 upon the theory of knowing and being (Epistemology 

 and Metaphysics), producing a special school of thought 

 termed Pragmatism. The opposite school of ethical 

 thought which starts from the sense of obligation and 

 the conception of duty {Pfiichtenlehre) has, according 

 to Paulsen, its beginning — so far as European civilisa- 

 tion is concerned — in the Mosaic Decalogue. It has 

 been deepened and enlarged in the moral code of 

 Christianity, and has found its most adequate philo- 

 sophical expression in the Kantian Ethics, or what 

 is generally called the Critical school of Ethics. Ac- 

 cordingly we find that its representatives all more or 

 less go back to Kant, who has elaborated the philo- 

 sophical conceptions and fixed the vocabulary for this 

 form of modern ethical thought. 



In another recent German publication which aims at 

 giving a view of the position of philosophy at the end of 

 the nineteenth century, connecting itself with the cele- 

 brated name of the first comprehensive historian of 

 modern philosophy, Kuno Fischer, a recent thinker, 

 Bruno Bauch, deals with the ethical problem from a 

 somewhat diiferent point of view. He takes more note 

 than Paulsen does of the subjective or individualistic 

 tendency which threatens in Germany to destroy or sub- 

 vert the traditional morality of common- sense, putting 



