THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 303 



genuine science and philosophy, picking up scraps 

 here and there and piecing them together in some 

 what of an aimless fashion fortunate indeed, if 

 not vague and over-ambitious. Yet social ethics 

 represents the attempt to translate philosophy 

 from a general and therefore abstract method into 

 a working and specific method; it is the change 

 from inquiring into the nature of value in general 

 to inquiring as to the particular values that ought 

 to be realized in the life of every one, and as to the 

 conditions which render possible this realization. 



There are those who will see in this conception of 

 the outcome of a four-hundred-year discussion con 

 cerning the nature and possibility of knowledge a 

 derogation from the high estate of philosophy. 

 There are others who will see in it a sign that phi 

 losophy, after wandering aimlessly hither and yon 

 in a wilderness without purpose or outcome, has 

 finally come to its senses has given up metaphys 

 ical absurdities and unverifiable speculations, and 

 become a purely positive science of phenomena. 

 But there are yet others who will see in this move 

 ment the fulfilment of its vocation, the clear con 

 sciousness of a function that it has always striven 

 to perform; and who will welcome it as a justifica 

 tion of the long centuries when it appeared to sit 

 apart, far from the common concerns of man, 

 busied with discourse of essence and cause, ab 

 sorbed in argument concerning subject and object, 



