physics. The latter science investigates the questions which are left over for it by other sciences, questions fundamental and depending like those of all other sciences on the existence of certain facts, but not capable of decision till the ground has been prepared. The ideas of metaphysics, though first in the order of importance, are not first in the order of discovery.

19. The other reason why ethics is thought to require metaphysics to precede it, and to be in fact a part of metaphysics, is that ethical inquiries really stand very near to metaphysics, and may be the most natural way of raising ultimate questions. Later on, one or two instances will be given where ethical inquiry is by itself insufficient, and suggests for solution of its difficulties more comprehensive questions. But ethics is not a part of metaphysics because it happens to stand, so to speak, next door. To suppose so is a prejudice analogous to that which confines a liberal education to literature, and excludes the study of natural science. A liberal education aims at producing the character which is bent upon seeing things truly, whether in merely intellectual matters, or in affairs of life. It depends on the love of truth, and gives that feeling an object. The habit may be more easily acquired, in general, by living in contact with the great thoughts of great men about human life, on account of the familiarity and the practical importance of the ideas. But the multiplicity of details in nature and the remoteness of its interest do not make the study of it less liberalising because truth may be here more difficult to find. In like manner ethics is not made the more metaphysical because it perpetually borders on metaphysics. It does so because it deals with conduct, and conduct means a uniting of nature and mind to form a new reality. But instead of its being true that "some conclusion in regard to the relation between man and nature must be arrived at before we can be sure that any theory of ethics is other than wasted labour," 1 that relation can1 Adapted from Prolegomena to Ethics, p. 54.

not be properly discussed before we have explained what attitude is taken by man towards nature in good conduct. The temptation is strong, to think that, where mind enters, metaphysics enters with it; but so long as ethics is content to describe the facts before it, to examine the meaning of right and wrong, and to explain the basis of those institutions in which good is expressed, it remains in its own proper sphere. It leaves to metaphysics such questions as the relation of man to nature, the meaning of there being a multiplicity of minds (which seems to depend on their natural conditions), the ultimate nature of the individual, and reality in general, but these questions leave ethics in a different shape from that which they possess before ethics exists. Metaphysical ideas are implied in every science and indeed in every judgment of life, but all the sciences contribute to elucidate their meaning, when the time comes to consider them in connection one with the other.

IV.-ETHICAL METHOD.

20. Let us gather together from this discussion of how ethics treats conduct, the hints we have learned as to ethical method as a whole. Ethics has first of all not to wait for metaphysics, but to prepare for it. In contrast with psychology, the duty of ethics lies in investigating not the mental events which make morality, but the reason of their receiving a value. The moral judgments are themselves of course mental events, but to interpret them we need the prior ethical inquiry. Ethics does indeed examine into the events called conduct, but the inquiry is only so far ethical as it discusses their bearings on moral judgment. But this preliminary labour achieved, it is concerned with the standard or type of conduct. Lastly, as regards the natural sciences, ethics can follow in their path only by observing the conditions imposed by the

nature of conduct itself. This restriction holds as regards biology as well, with which ethics has a special relation, because that science deals also with types, and accordingly we shall expect to find the truth of ethics analogous all along the line with those of the animal world.

If we are to give a name to the method which has to satisfy these conditions, it can only be that of the ethical method, or the method of science in general, as limited to the requirements of this particular order of facts. All science is one; it is the kind of facts it investigates which makes it and its method different. The name of moral philosophy has fostered the tendency to put ethics and logic by themselves, as though they were not sciences at all, and as though philosophy itself were not merely science at a certain stage. Moral science would be for this view a preferable name, if it did not expose ethics to be classed along with the natural sciences, as if its object were not different in kind, though related by affinity. The ancient name of ethics makes no presupposition, and leaves us free to treat the subject-matter of the science on its own merits, and according to its own wants. That subjectmatter consists in the moral judgments which our science has partly to classify, partly to analyse into their elements and to examine in their growth and movement. What this ethical method is in detail must be seen from its working. One part of the analysis, the ethical bearings of conduct, which is the subject of moral judgment, the present book has attempted to supply. We have now to consider the predicates of the judgment, the ideas of good and bad, right and wrong, themselves.

BOOK II.

STATICAL-MORAL ORDER.

PART I.-MORAL PREDICATES.

CHAPTER I.

THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE LAW.

I. THE DATA.

1. THE fundamental problem of ethics is to discover the meaning of the conceptions good and bad, or right and wrong, which with their allied epithets form the predicates of moral judgment. This inquiry, for which the preceding book has supplied only the preliminaries, I propose to conduct with especial reference to another problem, how the individual agent is related to the society in which he lives. It is plain that there could be no analysis of goodness which did not offer a solution of this other question as well: in the present state of ordinary and scientific opinion upon ethical subjects it is hardly dogmatic to declare the two problems to be identical. One thing at any rate is certain, that a proper analysis of goodness would exhibit the bearing of this conception upon both the individual and society, and explain the elements involved both in the conflict and the reconciliation between the interests of the unit and those of the whole.

The recognition that morality is unintelligible without reference to some society or to the larger needs of mankind is not only the prominent feature of the ethics of the day,

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but is implied in all moral theories that have ever been formulated. Even the strictest theory of selfish pleasure recognises an end distinct from the pleasure of the moment, and demands in conduct an estimate of circumstances, into which enter the liability to pain and the susceptibility to pleasure which a man derives from the existence of his fellow-men. Sympathy with the pleasures and pains of others has been made by the greatest of the hedonistic writers (Hume) the basis of moral sentiments.

An exception would seem to be created by Cyrenaic theories, which apparently lower the human end to momentary enjoyment. The exception is apparent only. Such theories often express less than they intend or than is attested by the practice of their authors. The wise are in fact called upon not to take each vulgar or casual pleasure as it comes, but to refine and select. The series of dainty and delightful moments is tempered and regulated by a certain concealed idea of personal dignity, an idea which appears in undisguised form in our modern representatives of Cyrenaic thought. Such personal dignity, as will be shown hereafter, implies a conception of man as not merely personal or a centre merely for himself, but as typical of a perfection which others may sympathise in and can attain. And if the proposition that morality is not merely a concern of the individual is true even on theories of pleasure, it is more obviously true on those which maintain an absolute law binding upon the individual a law which they contemplate as valid for a society, or mankind, and as expressing the qualities of human nature as such, irrespective of merely personal or private inclination.

2. If there has never been a theory of individualism which has not taken into account the claims of society or mankind, neither has there ever been a theory which, starting from the idea of a law greater than the individual, has not imposed upon the individual as such the 1 E.g., Pater's Marius the Epicurean.