150 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



with the summum bonum or Highest Good. It might, 

 at best, signify the aim at rationality of conduct, at a 

 perfect reign of reason, but it contains nothing through 

 which it recommends itself to our emotional nature, 

 stirs our feelings, or engages our interest. Yet without 

 this Kant saw quite well that practical morality would 

 be impossible. 

 IT. It may be well now to point out that the supreme 



Separate 



problem, the problem of the Good, has presented 



of teQocd. itself i n tne course of the history of philosophy, with 

 increasing clearness and definiteness, as involving two 

 entirely separate questions. 1 The first question refers 

 to that which we call morally good in the actions of 

 other men, as well as in reviewing our own conduct. 

 This has usually been termed the problem of the 

 Criterion of Morality. It corresponds to the definition 

 of the beautiful in ^Esthetics, and has not unfrequently 

 been termed the Morally Beautiful. That in our 

 judgment we distinguish between good and bad, is quite 

 as certain as that we distinguish between the beautiful 

 and the ugly. In both cases the one is the subject of 

 approbation and pleasure, while the other is the subject 



1 It may be incidentally re- 

 marked that among modern moral- 

 ists no one has more clearly pointed 

 out the difference of these two 

 distinct problems than Sir James 

 Mackintosh in his well-known Dis- 

 sertation published in the introduc- 

 tory volume to the ' Encyclopaedia 

 Britannica ' (1829) and several times 

 re-edited (by Wbewell), most re- 

 cently in 1873. Through its one- 

 sided treatment of both Hobbes and 

 Bentham it roused the indignation 

 of James Mill and prompted his 

 ' Fragment on Mackintosh,' which 



was suppressed owing to the death 

 of Mackintosh and published only 

 after the death of James Mill him- 

 self in 1836. Up to the appearance 

 of Sidgwick's ' Methods of Ethics ' 

 the treatise remained the leading 

 historical account of English moral 

 philosophy, characterised as much 

 by the absence of all reference 

 to German philosophy as by 

 the commendation of Butler as 

 the foremost exponent of the best 

 and also the most popular form of 

 British moral philosophy. 



