ic
consciousness, how can action which has regard for others take place?

Moral philosophies which have started from such premises have developed
four typical ways of dealing with the question. (i) One method
represents the survival of the older authoritative position, with
such concessions and compromises as the progress of events has made
absolutely inevitable. The deviations and departures characterizing an
individual are still looked upon with suspicion; in principle they are
evidences of the disturbances, revolts, and corruptions inhering in
an individual apart from external authoritative guidance. In fact, as
distinct from principle, intellectual individualism is tolerated in
certain technical regions--in subjects like mathematics and physics and
astronomy, and in the technical inventions resulting therefrom. But
the applicability of a similar method to morals, social, legal, and
political matters, is denied. In such matters, dogma is still to be
supreme; certain eternal truths made known by revelation, intuition,
or the wisdom of our forefathers set unpassable limits to individual
observation and speculation. The evils from which society suffers are
set down to the efforts of misguided individuals to transgress
these boundaries. Between the physical and the moral sciences, lie
intermediate sciences of life, where the territory is only grudgingly
yielded to freedom of inquiry under the pressure of accomplished fact.
Although past history has demonstrated that the possibilities of human
good are widened and made more secure by trusting to a responsibility
built up within the very process of inquiry, the "authority" theory sets
apart a sacred domain of truth which must be protected from the inroads
of variation of beliefs. Educationally, emphasis may not be put on
eternal truth, but it is put on the authority of book and teacher, and
individual variation is discouraged.

(ii) Another method is sometimes termed rationalism or abstract
intellectualism. A formal logical faculty is set up in distinction from
tradition and history and all concrete subject matter. This faculty of
reason is endowed with power to influence conduct directly. Since it
deals wholly with general and impersonal forms, when different persons
act in accord with logical findings, their activities will be externally
consistent. There is no doubt of the services rendered by this
philosophy. It was a powerful factor in the negative and dissolving
cr