Note 150 — X (continued 2)

Along the line thus inadequately suggested might be found an answer to certain criticisms of the attempt to dispense with a metaphysical idea of the self. Such criticisms usually urge that without reference to a metaphysical ideal no meaning attaches to such conceptions as "adjustment," "expansion," "furtherance," and the like as predicated of the moral acts of an agent in their effect upon the "energetic" self. Anything that one may do, it is said, is expansive of the self, if it be something new, except as we judge it by a metaphysical ideal of a rightly expanded self. For an excellent statement of this general line of criticism see Stratton, "A Psychological Test of Virtue," International Journal of Ethics, Vol. XI, p. 200.