CURRENT TENDENCIES 27 



obtrude in the detail or be expected in the special results 

 which are sought. 



If this view seems at first sight disappointing, we may 

 remind ourselves that a similar change has been found 

 necessary in all the other sciences. The physicist or 

 chemist is not now required to prove the ethical import- 

 ance of his ions or atoms ; the biologist is not expected 

 to prove the utility of the plants or animals which he 

 dissects. In pre-scientific ages this was not the case. 

 Astronomy, for example, was studied because men be- 

 lieved in astrology : it was thought that the movements 

 of the planets had the most direct and important bearing 

 upon the lives of human beings. Presumably, when this 

 belief decayed and the disinterested study of astronomy 

 began, many who had found astrology absorbingly in- 

 teresting decided that astronomy had too little human 

 interest to be worthy of study. Physics, as it appears in 

 Plato's Timaus for example, is full of ethical notions : it 

 is an essential part of its purpose to show that the earth 

 is worthy of admiration. The modern physicist, on the 

 contrary, though he has no wish to deny that the earth 

 is admirable, is not concerned, as physicist, with its 

 ethical attributes : he is merely concerned to find out 

 facts, not to consider whether they are good or bad. In 

 psychology, the scientific attitude is even more recent and 

 more difficult than in the physical sciences : it is natural 

 to consider that human nature is either good or bad, 

 and to suppose that the difference between good and bad, 

 so all-important in practice, must be important in theory 

 also. It is only during the last century that an ethically 

 neutral science of psychology has grown up ; and here 

 too ethical neutrality has been essential to scientific 

 success. 



In philosophy, hitherto, ethical neutrality has been 



