SECTION E ETHICS 



(Hall 6, September 23, 10 a. m.) 



CHAIRMAN: PROFESSOR GEORGE H. PALMER, Harvard University. 

 SPEAKERS: PROFESSOR WILLIAM R. SORLEY, University of Cambridge. 



PROFESSOR PAUL HENSEL, University of Erlangen. 

 SECRETARY: PROFESSOR F. C. SHARP, University of Wisconsin. 



THE RELATIONS OF ETHICS 



BY WILLIAM RITCHIE SORLEY 



[William Ritchie Sorley, Kiiightbridge Professor of Moral Philosophy in the 

 University of Cambridge; Fellow of the British Academy, b. Selkirk, Scot- 

 land, 1855. M.A. Edinburgh; Litt.D. Cambridge; Hon. LL.D. Edinburgh. 

 Post-Graduate, Shaw Fellow, Edinburgh University, 1878; Fellow, Trinity 

 College, Cambridge, 1883; Lecturer, Local Lectures Syndicate and for the 

 Moral Science Board, Cambridge, 1882-86; Deputy for the Professor of 

 Philosophy, University College, London, 1886-87; Professor of Philosophy, 

 University College, Cardiff, 1888-94; Regius Professor Moral Philosophy, 

 Aberdeen, 1894-1900. Author of Ethics of Naturalism, 1885 (new ed. 1904); 

 Mining Royalties, 1889; Recent Tendencies in Ethics, 1904; Edition of 

 Adamson Development of Modern Philosophy, 1903.] 



THERE are many departments of inquiry whose scope is so well 

 defined by the consensus of experts that one may proceed, almost 

 without preliminary, to mark off the boundaries of one science from 

 other departments, to investigate the relations in which it stands 

 to them, and to exhibit the place which each occupies in the whole 

 scheme of human knowledge. In other departments opinion differs 

 not only regarding special problems and results, but concerning the 

 whole nature of the science and its relation to connected subjects. 

 The study of ethics still belongs to this latter group. In it there is no 

 consensus of experts. Competent scholars hold diametrically opposed 

 views as to its scope. They differ not merely in the answers they 

 give to ethical questions, but in their views as to what the fundamen- 

 tal question of ethics is. And this opposition of opinion as to its 

 nature is connected with a difference of view regarding the relation 

 of ethics to the sciences. By many investigators it is set in line 

 with the sciences of biology, psychology, and sociology; and its 

 problems are formulated and discussed by the application of the same 

 historical method as those sciences employ. On the other hand, it is 

 maintained that ethics implies and requires a concept so different 

 from the concepts used by the historical and natural sciences as to 

 give its problem an altogether distinct character and to indicate 



