240
PAR TIS A N R'EV lEW
which we feel when a knife cuts a nerve is itself already in the knife.
It
is
Mr. Vivas, not contemporary naturalists, who believes that there
can be no more in the effect than in the cause, for he seeks to show
that nothing could come into existence-whether values or the sense
of values-unless it were already there.
That no more than promising beginnings have been made in ex–
plaining guilt feelings
in
terms of sociology, psychology, and personal
history would be granted by any sober naturalist. For that matter, we
cannot yet explain the origins of genetic variation and an indefinite
number of other physical and biological phenomena. But Mr. Vivas
brushes all this aside as an evasion and asserts that the naturalistic
approach can explain nothing-absolutely nothing- about man's moral
experience because the phenomena in question make manifest the pres–
ence in human nature of something beyond nature, society, and human
nature-something which points to the existence of an entirely different
kind or order.
This is certainly a position worth considering. It has an ancient and
honorable lineage much more clearly expressed in a thousand writers
than in Mr. Vivas. But so far it has never explained these phenomena
except by converting the problematic into the mysterious and multiplying
entities and problems beyond necessity.
It is one thing to say about any naturalist's conception of human
nature that it is shallow and unscientific. Dewey can learn from Freud
and Freud from Dewey and both from the gestaltists and other observ–
ers old and new. There is nothing in his method, which is both self–
corrective and always on the look-out for new knowledge, which pre–
cludes
him
from discovering that all men are as hopelessly vicious as
Mr. Vivas believes them to be.
It
is quite another thing to assert that
we possess a knowledge about the facts of human nature which is neces–
sarily beyond confirmation by patient investigation-i.e., by the use of
hypotheses, logical inference, and controlled observation that define the
pattern
of scientific knowledge.
The most important reason for Mr. Vivas' rejection of naturalism
is his dread of what he fears is its inescapable moral corollary. Unless
we hold that there exists an absolute standard of moral perfection–
vague and dangerous as it may be to invoke such a standard-then all
that is left for us is a might makes right morality. He is quite explicit
on this point.
If
we reject the view that there is a criterion of perfec–
tion identical for all men in all societies, "we would do well to quit fool–
ing ourselves with unstable attempts to look at the truth, for the other
firm alternative
is
the frankly 'might-makes-right' morality of the
posi-
