Davidson's immorality and the will embodied in law
But we have willed something. We have willed the law against which he rebels.
The closing reversal challenges Davidson on the ground of his own appeal: if willing deserves respect simply as willing, a settled law can claim that respect too. The rebel needs a reason to prefer his particular will to the will embodied in the institution. This extends the preceding paragraph's distinction between the occurrence of an action and a standard by which it can be judged. It does not, by itself, prove either that existing law is morally right or that everyone has consented to it. Chesterton's collective ‘we’ carries an additional claim about whom the law represents.
Davidson's The Theatrocrat (first published 1905; inspected in Project Gutenberg's transcription of the London, E. Grant Richards edition dated 1905) gives this encounter a concrete setting. Its opening dedication urges the next generation to disregard prohibitions and inherited authority. In the Introduction, ‘Wordsworth's Immorality and Mine,’ Davidson redefines immorality as difference in conduct; he treats established moral orders as temporary formations in a changing material universe. Crucially, he explicitly recognizes a pervasive drive toward morality, rather than overlooking it. His Introduction §III also offers numerous alternative ‘will’ descriptions of the universe, making any single metaphysical formula provisional. Davidson, dedication and Introduction §§I, III.
Chesterton therefore identifies a real tension between Davidson's praise of innovation and the persistence of moral order. But ‘will to anything’ is Chesterton's polemical reduction: Davidson's own account gives change a positive cosmological significance. To answer Davidson fully would require contesting that valuation, as well as observing that ordinary morality is itself something people want.
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