Methods of Ethics. 9 



mate science, it cannot claim to be a science of 

 the same type as logic, without at least foregoing 

 the problems which have hitherto constituted its 

 principal subject-matter. 



Can ethics, then, be likened to mathematics? 

 Between this science and logic there are striking 

 points of contrast. Mathematics reasons about 

 real existence in its most general aspects of space 

 and time and number ; logic deals only with the 

 empty forms of reasoning. Both start with fun 

 damental principles of intelligence ; but the pro 

 cedure in one case is analytic, in the other syn 

 thetic. In logic, consequently, there is no subse^ 

 quent advance upon the initial laws of thought, 

 with which everything else is given ; but in math 

 ematics the axioms and definitions are, by con 

 structive imagination or synthetic insight into new 

 relations, realized into a body of demonstrations, 

 which are not less certain than the first prin 

 ciples, but of which these gave no anticipation or 

 prophetic hint. A real science thus formed by the 

 mind out of its own resources, in utter indepen 

 dence of sense, is too captivating an ideal for the 

 genius of speculation to resist ; and it has been the 

 model of the systems at least of Plato and Spinoza. 

 Even a mind so sober and cautious as Locke s 

 did not escape the fascination, and that, too, with 



