# The Philosophical Review/Volume 1/Review: Kies - The Ethical Principle

That self-sacrifice, though the complement of justice and inseparable from it, is peculiarly the principle of growth, — even in the sphere of industrial relations where self interest is usually supposed to be the animating motive, — is the author's thesis.
By virtue of his self-consciousness the individual is in a continual process of self-making. Thoughts, feelings, and acts contribute to the evolution of the soul. This process of self-determination, of return unto the self, is the process of justice, the vital principle, the principle of individuality. Man thinks, feels, and acts, his activity works itself out in himself, — thus he realizes his freedom. As a member of society, ​on the other hand, his thoughts, feelings, and acts are returned to him by other men, neither increased nor diminished, — this is justice.
There has yet been found, however, a conservative principle only. Why is there progress? Because each mind, though limited, is infinite in its possibilities. In this fact is the necessity of growth. The process by which man grows is that of self-sacrifice: the process of yielding is that of making; and man in giving up his selfish interests and desires for the interests of others only gives up a phase of finitude.
The course of history shows that man at one time throws off all bonds, at another is shackled by them; from servility he rudely forces his way up to despotism, from haughty pride he sinks down to lowly self-sacrifice. That is the false freedom, license; this is the true freedom, service: that finds its compromise in non-interference, this has no limit where men exist.
Among myriad atoms of so nearly equal force and resistance, the efficiency of any individual will depend largely upon direction. What is the principle which will guide his progress? What is the direction of the whole, contrary to which, even though it were possible, it would still be vain to move? There are two factors which must always be considered, — self and others, — and as a relation between these two his principle of action must be expressed. There are many variations of greater or less persistence: that arising from the highest grade of thought would place others as the centre of interest, and the self as a recipient of reflected good: this is the ethical principle, and in its practical application secures the highest development of society.
In the beginning of the state come freedom and justice. This expresses itself in primitive rules of natural right. The first of these is the right of life; then others, determined by force of individuality, which concern the appropriation and holding of property. The highest natural right is to a share in government: "the true sovereignty rests in the will of the people." This principle the teachings of Christ enforced with greater emphasis than it had been taught before in the world.
What the teachings of Christ so emphatically enforced was not, however, the natural rights of man, but his natural obligations. While the question is of rights, it is of distribution; when it becomes one of duties, it is one of concentration: the former was the question of justice, of freedom; the latter is the question of self-sacrifice, of love; the one divided up the labor and the profit; the other has erected our modern institutions. One of the most progressive tendencies of to-day is the earnest endeavor after education, prison reform, and the establishment of commissions to inquire into and redress railway, factory, and other industrial wrongs.
The error of the author throughout, if extremity is error, consists in ​exaggeration of self-conscious activity to the grandeur of absolute creative power. This will appear in the following passage: "Since in the very individuality of the person there is the power to resist the environment, or to make it subservient to the self, a capability of persistence under change and at the same time capability to so react upon the self that the self is thereby self-produced, what is there to indicate that this process of self-making ever ceases? . . . And if the individual makes himself, and if there are before him infinite possibilities of development, why do not these very facts presuppose the immortality of the soul?" Self-consciousness as the path to unselfishness, and altruism as the foundation of business enterprise, are daring theories, as bold as the epigram, "extremes meet."
Charles C. Cook.