ground for belief. "The speculative hypothesis is a risk taken in the
sphere of thought; action in accordance with this hypothesis is a
risk taken in the sphere of will; and that being is higher who will
undertake and risk the more whether in thought or action."[1] Thus,
"for example, if I would perform an act of charity pure and simple,
and wish to justify this act rationally, I must imagine an eternal
Charity at the ground of things and of myself, I must objectify the
sentiment which leads to my action; and here the moral agent plays
the same _role_ as the artist.... In every human action there is
an element of error, of illusion": and it is conjectured that this
element increases as the action rises above the commonplace: "the most
loving hearts are the most often deceived, in the highest geniuses the
greatest incoherences are often found."[2]

[Footnote 1: Guyau, Esquisse d'une morale sans obligation ni sanction
(1885) p. 250.]

[Footnote 2: Ibid., pp. 226, 227.]

This solution can hardly be regarded as other than a counsel of
despair. Its ethical value is merely apparent. What is of importance
for ethics is not so much the presence of some ideal: it is the kind
of ideal that matters. It is possible to have an ideal of selfishness
as well as an ideal of love, a sensual ideal as well as a spiritual.
Nietzsche's over-man is an ideal; the Mohammedan paradise is an ideal;
and conduct can be modelled on them. But it is not enough to have
system in conduct, irrespective of the worth of the ideal which
determines the system. Some criterion is needed for deciding between
competing ideals. As long as they are looked upon as mere illusions,
as expressions of doubt, or as a hazard staked on the unknowable,
caprice takes the place of law; where all is equally uncertain there
is no security for the worth of the ideal itself.

Unsatisfactory as they are in this form, the opinions referred to are
echoes of a pregnant doctrine of Kant's--the doctrine that the moral
consciousness brings us into closer touch with reality than the merely
theoretical reason can reach. Various lines of recent thought may
be said to have been suggested by this view. Almost every idealist
metaphysician has tended to look upon thought itself as constituting
the inmost reality of the universe which it conceives or understands;
and Kant's doctrine may make us pause and ask whether this tendency is
not simply an assumption without warrant.

Again, the p