56o 



NATURE 



[December 29, 1921 



ideals is no more obvious than is its irreconcila- 

 bility with the existence of pure mathematics. 



Secondly, one may dispute the limitation, which 

 Mr. Matthews would thrust upon us, to a choice 

 between mere individual taste-preferences, on 

 one hand, and absolute moral standards indepen- 

 dent of a\\ human minds, on the other. The ob- 

 jectivity of moral judgments, like the objectivity 

 of physical objects and their relations, may mean 

 simply their "commonness" or universality, and 

 this is not to be assumed identical with their 

 existence per se ; the over-individual is not neces- 

 sarily the over-social or the absolute, and, there- 

 fore, does not directly imply the theistic postu- 

 late. To show that morality is independent of the 

 lower or the sub-personal preferences of the in- 

 dividual is not to show that it is independent of 

 the socially developed conative experience of the 

 race. Universal experience is but an elaboration 

 of the individual experience which it presupposfes, 

 whether on the ethical or the scientific side. 



Thirdly, it would save confusion if, instead of 

 speaking- of the "existence" of moral ideals, 

 which savours of the ontological fallacy, we spoke 

 of their validity. Ideals "exist" only as ideas in 

 minds — as Mr. Matthews in one place admits. 

 And absolute norms, perfect ideals, like all limit- 

 ing-concepts, whether in mathematics or in 

 ethics, have, in so far as their existence is con- 

 cerned, precisely the same ontological status as 

 relative norms. There seems to be no more need 

 to invoke a theistic origin for them than for the 

 other kind. 



Fourthly, though the concept of moral pro- 

 gress may presuppose a concept of an end, and 

 the concept of a moral end or a highest good may 

 presuppose the concept of its attainability, it does 

 not follow that actual progress may not be effected 

 by humanity's possession of an idea of a rela- 

 tively better state, or without any sanguine hope 

 that mankind will ever achieve a perfect moral 

 condition. Hence the argument that the fact of 

 moral progress in the race implies the truth of 

 theism (which resembles in form the Kantian 

 argument for human immortality), like all direct 

 arguments from morality to theism, seems to me 

 to involve a fallacy. Theism is rather to be pre- 

 sented as the best interpretation of our knowledge 

 and experience as a whole, and its strength lies 

 in its cumulativeness ; but morality alone cannot 

 conclusively justify the belief. 



Lastly, the author's moral argument, as a 

 whole, seems to me to be vitiated by his appar- 

 ently unconscious use of the ambiguous word 

 "rationality " in three different senses. The only 

 rationality — as predicated of the world — of which 

 NO. 2722, VOL. 108] 



we have knowledge, and which can therefore formi 

 the major premiss in an argument to theism from' 

 human needs or aspirations, is the partial " in- 

 telligibility " of the world by our analytic under- 

 standing. I say "partial," because wholly amen- 

 able to such understanding, and to the deductive- 

 ness at which theoretical science aims, the world 

 (in spite of Mr. Matthevvs's apparent belief or 

 hope to the contrary) certainly is not. There is the 

 essentially alogical element of brute fact, of sen- 

 sible quality, of physical constants, which 

 science, while ever disregarding it in her search 

 for deductiveness and for identity, implicitly re- 

 cognises in her empirical procedure. In one or two 

 passages {e.g. p. 154) Mr. Matthews explicitly 

 uses "rational" in this sense of "intelligible." 

 But this sense is quite distinct from, and it by 

 no means implies, either the second meaning (that 

 which is generally before the writer's mind in this 

 chapter) of " teleologically ordered," or the third 

 (which is always in the background of his thought, 

 and peeps out, e.g. on p. 117), in which 

 " rational " becomes synonymous with " reason- 

 able," or with "satisfying " man's hopes or aspira- 

 tions. In consequence of a surreptitious inter- 

 change of these diverse meanings of "rationality," 

 Mr. Matthevvs's argument may appear plausible; 

 but in strict logic it only establishes the tauto- 

 logy that if the world be teleologically ordered, 

 theism is true. F. R. Texnant. 



Domestic Heating and Waste of Coal 

 and Health. 

 Domestic Fuel Consumption. By A. H. Barker. 

 (The Chadwick Library.) Pp. x+159. (Lon- 

 don: Constable and Co., Ltd., 1920.) 14s. net.' 

 ONE of the most important domestic ques- 

 tions which faces the Government is the| 

 conservation of coal, and at the same time of 

 health, by the cleansing of the skies and cities 

 from soot. A nation of sun worshippers 

 would not have fouled its dwellings as the wor- 

 shippers of Mammon in our cities have done. The 

 waste of coal hitherto has been colossal. Prof. 

 W. A. Bone estimated that no less than 95 per 

 cent, of the thermal energy of coal is wasted 

 in power production, and Mr. A. H. Barker, in 

 his Chadwick lectures on " Domestic Fuel Con- 

 sumption," now published in book form, estimates 

 that of the fuel used for domestic service, of the 

 yearly value of 50,000,000/., at least three-quarters 

 is wasted, partly through ignorance and careless- 

 ness, and partly through defects in the design of 

 the plant employed. A person who is wasting 

 water and food can see these going to waste, but 

 he, or she, cannot see heat running away, and so 

 no effort is made for economy. 



