254 



PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



74. 



Return to 



Kantian 



Ethics. 



75. 

 W. Wundt. 



in its place not the fatalism and indifferentism of a 

 purely naturalistic teaching, but the extreme self-assertion 

 of human personality culminating in what he terms the 

 ' Iminoralism ' of Nietzsche. Both these tendencies, the 

 naturalistic and the immoralistic, have so we are told 

 to be combated by a critical examination of the data 

 of the existing ethical consciousness. Such an antidote is 

 to be found in the Ethics of Kant which start from the 

 fact of obligation : the Categorical Imperative and the 

 autonomous, i.e., self-restraining character of the human 

 Will. It is interesting to note that Paulsen's Ethics are 

 largely influenced by the conception of life, by a biologi- 

 cal conception ; whereas the representatives of the other 

 school rest more upon historical studies such as have 

 emanated from the idealistic philosophies of Germany. 

 An intermediate position which aims at doing justice to 

 the spirit of the natural as well as to that of the histori- 

 cal sciences, is taken up by Professor Wundt, so that 

 the representatives of both schools in Germany are able 

 to refer with approbation to his treatise on Ethics as a 

 standard work. 1 



Professor Wundt is a foremost representative of 

 voluntarism in Ethics as well as in general philosophy. 

 He has moreover introduced into Psychology and Ethics 

 a valuable idea which deserves special recognition and 

 attention. As I have already had repeated occasion to 

 remark in former chapters, 2 he makes the difference be- 

 tween psychical and physical phenomena this : that the 

 latter consist only in a rearrangement of an unalter- 



1 Wilhelm Wundt, ' Ethik ' 

 (1886 ; trans, by Titchener, 1897). 



2 See vol. ii. p. 526, n., and vol. 

 iii. pp. 396 and 397, n. 



