314 HUMANISM 



XVII 



animals and bestow a deeper significance on human life 

 is the fact that man alone is aware of the doom that 

 terminates his earthly existence, and on this account 

 lives a more spiritual life, in the ineffable consciousness 

 of the sword of Damokles which overshadows him and 

 weights his lightest action with gigantic import. Nay, 

 more ; stimulated by the ineluctable necessity of facing 

 death, and of living so as to face it with fortitude, 

 man has not abandoned himself to nerveless inaction, to 

 pusillanimous despair ; he has conceived the thought, he 

 has cherished the hope, he has embraced the belief, of a 

 life beyond the grave, and opened his soul to the religions 

 which baulk the king of terrors of his victims and defraud 

 him of his victory. Thus, the fear of death has been 

 redeemed and ennobled by the consoling belief in immor 

 tality, a belief from which none are base enough to 

 withhold their moral homage, even though the debility 

 of mortal knowledge may debar a few from a full 

 acceptance of its promise. Such are the themes of 

 endless dithyrambs, of inexhaustible eloquence on the 

 part of our poets and preachers, such the constituents of 

 a volume of uncontested literary tradition which the 

 hardiest sceptic could scarcely dare to question. 



And yet to one regarding human action in the merely 

 inquisitive temper of psychologic science this mass of 

 literary conventions is by no means above suspicion. 

 If we look closely, is it so certain that it fully represents 



What percentage of human beings use respectively aesthetical, emotional, 

 prudential, and strictly ethical modes of valuation in their judgments concerning 

 the actions commonly classed as moral ? is at present simply unanswerable. 

 But it ought to be capable of being answered, if not with mathematical exactness, 

 yet with practically sufficient accuracy. And until we can answer it ethics will 

 never be a science, and moralists will continue to beat the air and to tilt at 

 windmills. I should propose, therefore, as a counsel of perfection, to be adopted 

 on that happy day (now, I trust, approaching) when philosophers will no longer 

 content themselves with idle speculation, but will speculate only to interpret and 

 investigate the facts which form the final test of speculation, that societies be 

 formed for the study of the psychological facts of actual human sentiment in 

 these regions. Such societies would have to formulate their questions in a 

 simple, interesting, and concrete way, to circulate them and to tabulate the 

 answers. Such methods would, I believe, prove more fruitful than the laborious 

 mimicry of physiology which at present passes for experimental psychology, 

 though they need not conflict with the latter, and indeed might incidentally 

 suggest to it some experiments really worth making. 



