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Aristotle tells us Socrates applied to ethics. It rests wholly on facts of feeling, which cannot be justified or criticized. Feeling cannot test its own validity. And feelings vary. It is only by arbitrarily excluding the savage and the man of earlier civilizations that we can get any approach to uniformity of moral feeling. Besides, there is much less uniformity in our own moral approbation and disapprobation than is commonly supposed. Theologians and philosophers differ between themselves, as well as the civilized man from the savage. Women approve and disapprove differently from men. If we ask what virtue they estimate most highly, to which they would postpone all others, the woman and the man, the philosopher and the hero, the philanthropist and the theologian, will give different replies.

It seems then a somewhat hopeless task to base our ethics on inductive inferences from the facts of moral feeling, if we regard ethics as a science of the same kind as the positive sciences, which give us definite conclusions resting on a more or less certain basis of axioms or observations, as the case may be. If, however, we are willing to regard it as parallel rather to æsthetics than to these, we may well be contented with the basis thus described. But like æsthetics we shall expect ethics to give us no absolute principles, only to tell us what normally meets with the approval of cultivated moral perception, and to explain why. We shall have to come back to the attitude of Aristotle, who lays down that abstract accuracy cannot

be expected in ethics, the subject matter of which does not permit of demonstrative certainty. Although by induction we cannot prove that any end, say pleasure, ought to be the end of conduct, we can prove that most wise men think it so, and we must be content with this result. We shall have to allow that desirable means merely what is desired by those whose opinions we value most; and we shall have to take a purely relative view of the meaning of obligation and of right.

The alternative to induction as the guarantee of our ultimate major premises must be intuition. If these premises are not obtained by generalization from particular facts or particular judgments, they must be recognized as true immediately on mere inspection, like the axioms of mathematics. Their validity must be guaranteed in the act of understanding them. Such is the theory of those philosophers who are called Intuitionists or Intuitionalists. It makes the science of ethics essentially deductive, and assimilates it in some degree to the science of geometry.

It will be noted that in this view we must be prepared to find our theoretical conclusions sometimes at variance with received moral judgments. Induction may serve as a check, but it is not valid against careful deductive conclusions from moral axioms.

§ 4. The Science of Ethics.

Science examines its data and proves their reality and validity; it classifies them, arranging them so

that they can be handled most conveniently; and it draws from them conclusions either more general, by induction, or more special, by deduction.

So in ethics, we find a portion of the science devoted to showing the nature of moral judgments, what their objectivity and validity really means. This part of the science is largely psychological, because the nature and validity of the judgments depend to some extent on the mental processes on which they rest. Questions as to the character of the moral faculty are almost necessarily implied. We deal with such terms as Conscience, Moral Reason, Moral Intuition, etc.

These deliverances of our moral faculties, percepts, concepts, judgments, and emotions, are brought under each other in proper subordination. Classes and subclasses of moral predicates are formed, and the relations of these categories to each other are considered. have to determine what is meant by brave and just, good and right, obligation and merit, end and means, standard and sanction, real and ideal.

We

We must then seek to extend the classification beyond the points usually recognized-to bring special cases under general laws, to show that concepts apply to facts which have not been considered in connection with them. The bindingness of certain kinds of conduct, hitherto regarded as praiseworthy and not as obligatory, the incompatibility of ideals usually treated as practically equivalent, such inferences as these will be found in works on ethics.

In these respects the science of ethics will neces

sarily be like other sciences. But its special character lies in the admission of the ideal element. A merely positive ethics which does no more than recognize that certain rules are usually observed, and does not regard them as in any sense binding, is no ethics at all, but a branch of anthropology or sociology. There is need for an ideal element; such or such a rule ought to be observed, such or such an excellence ought to be aimed at, is implied in the terms right or good. The ideal is not necessarily given by any special faculty; it may be supplied by imagination, which carries on and develops the result of induction or experience. In this way ethics resembles jurisprudence, æsthetics, and other practical sciences. It does not merely describe what is, but seeks to describe what ought to be.

§ 5. Progress in Ethics.

It is usually acknowledged that there is progress in ethics. This may mean (1) that men conform better to rules they have always recognized but not always obeyed, or (2) that they gradually come to recognize a new standard of conduct as binding on them. Both forms of improvement usually go together; to raise the standard commonly implies greater efforts to conform to it; and a higher level of practice usually involves wider and nobler views of what is incumbent

on us.

At the same time, if standards change, we see that

our standard may become obsolete. What then is the relation of the higher standard to the lower? Is it mere contradiction? There is affirmation as well as denial. Cases which were previously not recognized as coming under some given moral rule are brought under it, as the subject matter is better understood, as imagination enables us to picture the conditions of such cases, and as sympathy widens. Thus women and negroes have in different ways and at different times been brought within the scope of moral relations. In earlier times they were ill-treated simply because even good men did not realize that they could rationally be regarded in the same way as males, and as white people, respectively.

The advance to a new position does not imply the absolute denial of the old one, but its inclusion in a wider formula which will embrace both. At the same time during the progress of the revolution there is often partial forgetfulness of what has already been learnt. When the movement is completed it will usually be found that what was valuable in the original position has been preserved as well as what is valuable in the new.

§ 6. Classification of Ethical Theories.

For the convenience of the reader it is worth while to anticipate a little and give here a rough classification of the chief ethical theories.' We may hold that a certain action is incumbent on us because it is neces1 See Dr. Sidgwick's "Methods of Ethics," bk. i., chap. i.

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