The question as to the relation of the Socrates of the Platonic dialogues to the historical Socrates, over which an apparently endless and irreconcilable controversy has raged, is well raised by a passage from Cornford, Plato’s Theory of Knowledge, at page 28: “Anamnesis appears first in the middle group of dialogues and provides the link between the two Platonic doctrines—the eternal nature of the human soul and the ‘separate’ existence of Forms, the proper objects of knowledge. The probable inference is that Anamnesis was a theory which squared the professions and practice of Socrates with Plato’s discovery of the separately existing Forms and his conversion from Socratic agnosticism to a belief in immortality.”

Second in importance only to the question raised by the short editorial in the last number of Philosophy: Why are we at War? is that on which there is at present a lively discussion going on in The Times and elsewhere under the title of “German Rulers and People”: With Whom are we at War? On one point there is no difference of opinion: we are at war with the blood- and crimestained group that, with Hitler at their head, hold the reins of government. Difference begins when it is asked what share the people of Germany as a whole has in their crimes. On the one side are those who hold that, as you cannot, in historical words, “bring an indictment against a whole nation,” neither can you be at war with a whole people, and that the main problem we have before us is the discovery of the means to appeal to the intelligence and hearts of the mass of the nation in order to enlist it against its Government as a common enemy. On the other side are those who quote the equally historic words that “every nation gets the kind of government it deserves,” from which “it follows that it deserves no immunity for the acts of the Government by which it chooses, or allows itself, to be governed.” This argument is reinforced first by a general philosophy of war as the “natural” order of things from which man is only gradually emerging into an exceptional and precarious condition of peace; and secondly, with regard to Germany in particular, that “the lust for dominance through force is, and will be for generations, at the root of the German character.” The importance of the issue as thus stated requires no emphasis.

The subject of my lecture is an appropriate one for several reasons. The first is purely chronological. Hume's first and greatest work, the Treatise of Human Nature, was published in 1739, two hundred years ago. Its illustrious author was then quite unknown in the world, and as he tells us himself the book “fell dead-born from the press.” But by the end of the eighteenth century its reputation was securely established, and it has long been regarded as one of the masterpieces of European thought, and as the classical statement of the Empiricist Philosophy. It is true that, like other classics, it has had its ups and downs. During the Absolute Idealist period, which ended early in the present century, Hume was the great bogey-man, and the duty of all self-respecting philosophers was to refute him. In our own day things are different. Empiricism, despite many obituary notices, is very much alive again. And this time it is in close alliance with Natural Science, and has equipped itself with all the technique of modern Symbolic Logic; it is more vigorous in construction and more formidable in criticism than it has ever been before. Consequently Hume is no longer the bogey-man. People now read the Treatise not as an awful warning, but as a source of stimulus and illumination. Incidentally, we can now enjoy his admirable style without any qualms. It is no longer thought that if a philosopher writes in clear and entertaining English, what he writes must therefore be either superficial or false. We regard obscurity and turgidity as demerits, not as signs of profound thinking. Moreover, we have learned to appreciate the eighteenth century, of which Hume was one of the most characteristic products.

At the present time Tribunals, appointed under an Act of Parliament, are engaged all over England in dealing with claims to exemption from military service based on the ground of “conscientious objection” to taking part directly or indirectly in warlike activities. Now it is no part of the professional business of moral philosophers to tell people what they ought or ought not to do or to exhort them to do their duty. Moral philosophers, as such, have no special information, not available to the general public, about what is right and what is wrong; nor have they any call to undertake those hortatory functions which are so adequately performed by clergymen, politicians, leader-writers, and wireless loudspeakers. But it is the function of a moral philosopher to reflect on the moral concepts and beliefs which he or others have; to try to analyse them and draw distinctions and clear up confusions in connection with them; and to see how they are inter-related and whether they can be arranged in a coherent system. Now there can be no doubt that the popular notions of “conscience” and “conscientious action” are extremely vague and confused. So I think that, by devoting this paper to an attempt to elucidate them, I may succeed in being topical without being impertinent.

Everybody is to some extent pacific, as everybody prefers to attain his ends by peaceful means if he can. Even the most bloodthirsty militarist uses threats of war rather than war, if threats will do the work. Though most people prefer persuasion to violence and peace to war, they are prepared as a last resort to go to war and use violence, when that seems the only means to attaining some end they consider to be of vital importance. The one hundred per cent pacifist, however, refuses to engage in war or support warlike action under any circumstances whatever. It is his case that I wish to consider. It is not my purpose to try to persuade anyone to be a pacifist or to be the opposite, but to point out that absolute pacifism carries with it certain logical consequences which are not particularly palatable. The opposed view, which I shall call the case for civic virtues, also carries unpalatable though different consequences. These two appear to be simple and clear-cut opposed views which I propose to state as fairly as I can, with their consequences. Certain qualifications and modifications will have to be considered later, but I do not think that there is actually any possible mean position which avoids the dilemma I am concerned to present. I shall state the case for civic virtue first and the pacifist case second.

The founder of Psychical Research, though he has not yet received the honour due to him, seems to have been King Croesus of Lydia, who reigned from 560 to 546 B.C. He carried out an interesting experiment, recorded in detail by Herodotus,2 to test the clairvoyant powers of a number of oracles. He sent embassies to seven oracles, six Greek and one Egyptian. They all started on the same day. On the hundredth day each embassy was instructed to ask its oracle, “What is King Croesus, the son of Alyattes, now doing?” The answer was to be written down and brought back. The oracle of Delphi replied as follows, in hexameters, as its custom was: “I know the number of the sands and the measures of the sea. I understand the dumb, and I hear him who does not speak.” Then it went on: “There comes to my mind the smell of a strong-shelled tortoise, which is being cooked along with lamb's flesh in a brazen vessel; brass is spread beneath it, and with brass it is covered.” As a matter of fact, this answer was perfectly correct. Herodotus tells us that “having considered what would be the most difficult thing to discover and to imagine,” Croesus “cut up a tortoise and a lamb, and himself boiled them together in a brazen pot.” What happened afterwards illustrates the difficulties of this sort of investigation, difficulties which still perplex us to this day. Croesus argued, reasonably enough, that if the Delphic priestess had clairvoyant powers, she probably also had the precognitive powers, she probably also had the precognitive powers which she claimed to have. But when he consulted the oracle later about his forthcoming expedition against the Persians, he received two answers, one of which was ambiguous—“When Croesus crosses the Halys he shall destroy a great empire”—and the other correct, but too obscure to be easily interpreted.

In the first part of this article I propose to describe two strongly contrasted situations in the world of thought, one of fifty years ago and the other of to-day. In the second I shall submit to my readers some reflections suggested by the contrast between the two.

Conflicting Systems in the History of Philosophy. Hegel's logic consists, as is well known, in a chain of categories, connected by a relation of dialectic, which proceeded from the featureless Being, Nothing, and Becoming through more important ones such as Substance, Cause, and Reciprocity to the highest category of all, the Absolute Idea. Now Hegel also pointed to an interesting correlation between the categories of his logic and the dominant concepts of those philosophies that preceded his own: that is to say, the logical order of categories given by him corresponded to the temporal order of the history of philosophy. Such connexion was not, however, to be regarded as an accident but as a necessary truth: for the Absolute manifested itself temporally in the form of the history of philosophy. Seeing that this contention probably contains some psychological truth and is probably assumed in Marxian interpretations of Hegel, it may be of some interest to see how far it can be substantiated.

There are times when we are so much in harmony with our surroundings that we are content to bask in the sunshine and to say to the passing hour, like Faust, “Stay with us; you are so fair.” There have been times when whole nations, or the most vocal part of them, have believed themselves to be living in a world which, if not the best of all possible worlds, is an abode from which they have no desire to escape. They are being challenged, for, as Walt Whitman says, “it is provided in the essence of things that from any fruition of success, no matter what, shall come forth something to make a greater struggle necessary.” But the challenge is unheeded, and the price is demanded later. Ubi nil timetur, quod timeatur nascitur.

In the pages that are to follow I shall try to discuss the validity and the sufficiency of a celebrated moral principle of Kant's “So act as to treat humanity, whether in thine own person or in that of any other, always as an end, never merely as a means.” In doing so, I shall say quite a lot about Kant, because his statement of the principle has had great influence, because he gave his genius to its elaboration, because he illustrated and defended it in ways that deserve a close examination. On the other hand, my principal purpose is not to supply a piece of Kantian exegesis interspersed with sundry criticisms. In the main I want to discuss the principle, as people say, “on its merits.” In so far as I discuss Kant himself, I am doing so with the object of eliciting these merits.

Despite the efforts of Bosanquet, Muirhead, Basch, and many others, it is still frequently stated or implied, in both popular and scholarly literature, that Hegel (a) constructed his philosophy of the State with an eye to pleasing the reactionary and conservative rulers of Prussia in his day, and (b) condoned, supported, and, through his teaching, became partly responsible for some of the most criticized features in “Prussianism” and even of present-day National-Socialism.5 Ijn this article I propose to give reasons for denying (i) that Hegel the man is justly accused of servility to the Prussian Government, and (ii) that there is any warrant in the text of his Philosophie des Rechts for the charge that Hegel the philosopher was an exponent of “Prussianism” and “ frightfulness.”

There have been two attempts in the history of human speculation to estimate the number of particles in the universe. The first was that of Archimedes of Syracuse about 216 B. C., and the second that of Sir Arthur Eddington nearly two thousand years later. What is surprising is that they both arrive at the same number. This is the number obtained by multiplying ten by itself seventy-nine times.

I want in this paper to enter a protest against the preoccupations of many contemporary philosophers, and to put in a plea for a return to the classical tradition in philosophy. According to this tradition, philosophy is, or at least should be, concerned with the whole conduct of life. It has two main functions, to clarify the wisdom of common-sense people, and to increase it. To put it technically, philosophy, as traditionally conceived, is an activity of self-conscious beings which seeks, among other things, critically to examine the manifestations of human consciousness and the principles which guide human activity; to examine not disinterestedly, but in order to illuminate, to assist, and to reform. Philosophy has, therefore, the dual purpose of revealing truth and increasing virtue. One of the methods traditionally employed for achieving these two purposes consists in the attempt to discover those values which are ultimate in the sense that, while other things are desired for the sake oi them, they alone are desired for their own sakes, to uncover by a process of analysis the values which underlie the judgments commonly passed by contemporary society—as for example, in our own society, the values implied by the judgment that increase of efficiency in slaughter is desirable, especially if combined with a readiness to undertake it whenever the State to which one happens to belong deems the moment expedient for the mass slaughter of the citizens of some other State—and to show how the latter deviate from the former.

In the Platonic dialogue that bears his name Protagoras,1 in a myth (320c–324d) and in a logos (324d–328b) positively affirms the absolute character of universal moral values, such as force themselves upon all men; this makes one think that the famous man-measure dictum was subservient to the ends that the sophist had in view as a teacher of areté. Indeed, his condemnation in that dialogue of the sophists who, like Hippias, included in their teaching mathematical and naturalistic studies (318d-e), must be connected with the criticism of mathematics reported by an Aristotelian text.2 These studies, that is to say purely theoretic disciplines, were considered by Protagoras not only useless for the spiritual formation of men and citizens, but also void of any certitude and objectivity whatever.3 We feel therefore allowed to suggest that also the man-measure principle had to perform an office of the same kind: to show that natural philosophy (which then comprehended all theoretical knowledge) could not yield an objective knowledge of φ?σις which formed its object, because such knowledge is denied to man. Mistrust of the general conceptions of the cosmology of physiologists was widely spread at that time, and the authors of some medical treatises of the Hippocratean corpus used it to justify the construction of a discipline founded on the study of empirical materials interpreted rationally and not with the general hypotheses void of certainty

There is a curious reluctance in many quarters to try to apply to the philosophical questions the ordinary person in the street is continually raising, the technique and results of recent logical and philosophical analysis. Ordinary persons like Uncle Tom and Aunt Mary persist in asking questions about the meaning of the Universe and the destiny of the individual. Yet, on the whole, the only answers that are offered come from those quarters that find themselves to-day increasingly out of tune with the temper and idiom of the times and more and more out-manoeuvred by the “talkie” and the gossip columnist of the gutter press. This situation has certain unfortunate results, and consequently imposes on philosophical analysis a special function at the present time.

It is easy to dispose of the historical aspect of this question. When Aristotle affirmed that the family is more natural than the State, in the sense of original rather than final or necessary, and taught his contemporaries to regard the State as the result of a gradual development through the family and the tribe, he adopted a viewpoint which would probably find universal endorsement to-day. Only a particularly perverse writer would endeavour to revive the controversy as to whether or not the institution of the State began with explicit resolutions concluded at a specific date. No doubt there are plentiful instances of the establishment of particular States through some agreement or contract on the part of its members. The case of the Pilgrim Fathers is often cited as a classical example. But this does not give us an original contract. We should seek one in vain.

When we climb in the high places of the earth, plodding slowly at mountaineer's pace with crampons on our boots, that we may keep foothold on the blue ice, we should stop from time to time and, steadying ourselves with our ice-axe for a moment, raise our downbent eyes, weary with guiding our steps between crevasses, to the great peaks we would conquer, and see, too, the foot hills we have left behind. Only by gazing thus can the Alpine climber find values, and often he catches too, just then, a glimpse of beauty. So it is profitable to turn from our work in laboratories and among the sick, to survey the general state of our knowledge in larger sweep. We cannot hope to have added by our deliberations to-day anything of solving value in this ultimate problem. But we clarify to ourselves the state of our small knowledge and the extent of our nescience, and, though we may throw on these matters no more light than that which Milton tells us shines in Hell, “enough to make darkness visible,” yet it were well done.

When travellers are overcome by cold, it is said, they lie down quite happily and die. They put up no fight for life. If they struggled, they would keep warm; but they no longer want to struggle. The cold in themselves takes away the will to fight against the cold around them.