Is the State organic? Does it, or should it, in some way transcend the individual natures of its citizens, so as itself to be an individual more complete and of higher value than the singular individuals who compose it? Is it thus in some sense an organism, and are its citizens in some sense organs of it which gain for themselves a higher value and significance in subserving it?

It is generally agreed that at least those who suffer from severe mental subnormality, like idiots, are not responsible for the antisocial actions that they may commit. Even Lady Wootton agrees that in the case of idiots and imbeciles ‘the defect is so great that no dispute is likely to arise, either as to the reality of the handicap or as to its effect in impairing capacity to conform to expected standards’.1 This passage, incidentally, contradicts some of her other views, e.g. the view that we can never make judgments about people's capacity.

I am grateful for Professor Manser's criticisms of my brief remarks on f retribution, and in particular for his concluding challenge (‘ … what J injury, on his account, did Adam and Eve do to God in the Garden of r Eden?’), because they bring out the central point I was trying to make—that ‘Retribution aims at a restoration of balance by compensation’ (p. 523). I interpreted ‘compensation’ widely, to include the disadvantaging (punishment) a person should suffer ‘if somebody breaks the rules of a particular deal’ (ibid.), in order that the proper status of the participants be restored. The injury done by Adam and Eve to God, and their punishment, come under this heading.

Poetry has to do with reality in its most individual aspect. It is thus at the opposite pole to science, and out of its reach. Studies like The Road to Xanadu, highly valuable though they may be in one way, do not help us in any measure to understand what poetry in itself is; nor do they heighten substantially our appreciation of poetry. This may seem rather obvious, but it is not in fact idle to say it. For our thought is apt to be unduly coloured to-day by the progress of science, and some of the votaries of science are prone to regard it, in the Biblical phrase, as ‘profitable unto all things.’ These are less naïve to-day than their prototypes a century ago, and they have a subtler psychology at their disposal when they turn to art. But their view is no less pernicious for that reason. Science has very certain limits, and we only bring it into contempt by forcing upon it a forlorn and unnatural enterprise beyond its own terrain. Some scientists, and they include eminent persons like Julian Huxley, have made that mistake in regard to our ideas of right and wrong, and have endeavoured to develop a science of ethics. It is not to the purpose here to expose the confusions involved in this particular act of aggression on the part of science. Science has nothing to do, in the final analysis, with our ideas of right and wrong. And it is also true, quite apart from ultimate questions about the meaning of value, that we cannot give a scientific analysis of art. Science may indeed help us to understand matters incidental to the pursuit of artistic activities.

The concepts of pleasure and good, both separately and in their relation to one another, have for centuries been a favourite and fruitful subject of philosophical discussion. The contrasting concepts of pain and evil, however, though by no means entirely neglected, have been, and still are, less popular among philosophers. The reason for this disparity is not altogether clear. The title of a recent autobiography, “Philosophers lead sheltered lives,” might support the explanation that philosophers are (no doubt very properly) reluctant to write on matters of which they have little or no first-hand knowledge. Pleasure and good, it may be said, form part of their own personal experience: but their academic seclusion has little place for either pain or evil. A more serious reason is the assumption, often made but rarely defended, that, since pain and pleasure, evil and good, are in some sense pairs of “opposites,” a full discussion of all four concepts is unnecessary. The nature of pain, it is thought, can easily be inferred from the nature of pleasure, and that of evil from that of good. But even if this were true, it ought not to be taken for granted; the belief (it is more often implicit than explicit) that these concepts are symmetrically disposed opposites ought to be held (if at all) only after an investigation into all of them. And in fact the belief is not true. It does not need profound insight or observation to see that we cannot (as some of the utilitarians once thought) construct a simple hedonic scale on which pleasure appears as a plus, and pain as a minus quantity. Contemporary hedonists have often paid more attention to the psychological complexities involved in this problem than did their classical predecessors. A. L. Hilliard, for example, distinguishes carefully between pain and unpleasantness. Pain he describes as a sensitivity, “correlated with the excitation of specific receptors in the nervous system”: unpleasantness is an affectivity (i.e. roughly, an emotion) to which physiological correlates, though they must be assumed to exist, have not yet been discovered.

Susan Lowe's criticism of Freya Mora's argument depends for almost all its force on one admittedly unfortunate word in Mora's article. There are other words there equally unhappy. But some simple verbal substitutions that would cause no unease to W. S. Gilbert's Lord Chancellor are sufficient to disarm Lowe's objection, and restore to Mora's solution of the problem of evil whatever strength it had.

In his recent paper on Aristotelian dialectic, Professor Hamlyn claims that ‘what may be important for Aristotle's purposes is not the truth but the acceptance of the truth’ (p. 474). Dialectic is protreptic, and not strictly philosophical, spadework: ‘[t]he appeal to endoxa is, as it were, a setting of the scene, providing the context for argument out of which, it is hoped, will emerge the insights from which demonstration and thus further understanding can follow’ (p. 475).

Following the practice of human beings everywhere historians distinguish the real or most significant cause(s) of an occurrence or state of affairs from ‘less important considerations’, ‘precipitating circumstances’, or ‘mere conditions’. I shall term claims that some phenomenon is most basically to be attributed to some one (or few) of the factors causally necessary for its occurrence attributive causal explanations or causal attributions and discusshere the extent to which moral convictions are constitutive of them.