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The intuitionist will understand that conscience, accumulated experience, has developed by experience within these laws. The utilitarian will see that the happiness of all, not only of the greatest number, must be ensured by a true morality, and will understand why Happiness is the result thereof.
It is very interesting to note that one of our best critics of intuitionism, Hemy Sidgwick, was himself an intuitionist. His Methods of Ethics deserves very close attention. Again Intuitions are often spoken of as if they had been shot out of a pistol, and had neither father nor mother. To understand them better it is only necessary to read chapter viii of Dr.
The philosophical intuitionist who accepts more than one ultimate moral rule must face the possibility that he will meet with a conflict of the higher intuitions to which he has had recourse. Shall his intuitions be those recommending a rational self-interest and a rational benevolence? Can he be sure that the two are necessarily in accord? Can there be a rational adjustment of the claims of each?
The Dogmatic Intuitionist has difficulties of his own with which to cope. It is not enough to possess a collection of valid and authoritative rules. The rules must be applied; there is room for the exercise of judgment and for the possibility of error.
To some famous intuitionists this has seemed to be a pernicious doctrine. Cf. Butler thought that justice should be done though the heavens fall; the philosophical intuitionist must maintain that the danger of bringing down the heavens is never to be lost sight of.
Would the standards have to be abandoned? Or would the men, as broader men, merely have to revise some of their moral judgments? It might be supposed that the acceptance of evolutionary doctrine would bring into being a grave problem for the intuitionist, at least. If the body and mind of man are products of evolution, must we not admit as much of man's moral intuitions?
Such a position may be turned dialectically by invoking whatever positive hopes or convictions the critic may retain, who while he lives cannot be wholly without them. But the position is specious and does not collapse, like that of the intuitionist, at the first breath of criticism. Pessimism, and all the moralities founded on despair, are not pre-rational but post-rational.
If a man reasons, if he falls back upon general considerations, if he looks into the future and weighs the consequences of his act, and, as a result, decides what he ought to do, he is no longer a perceptional intuitionist. The perceptional intuitionist, consistently and unreservedly such, is rather an ideal construction than an actually existing person.
A similar assumption that a rough sketch of a science is the same thing as its definite constitution is characteristic of the Utilitarians in general. A scientific spirit is most desirable; but the Utilitarians took a very short cut to scientific certainty. Though appealing to experience, they reach formulæ as absolute as any 'intuitionist' could desire. What is the logical process implied?
With the general spirit of these utterances the typical intuitionist is in sympathy, although he need not assent to the doctrine of innate ideas, nor need he hold that all moral truths are equally self-evident. There are intuitionists of various classes, and there are sufficiently notable differences of opinion.
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