Methods of Ethics. 13 



of a lifetime often fails to cover the range of 

 their original discoveries. But the science begun I - 

 by Socrates is still unfounded ; and every school 

 boy knows as much about morals as the greatest 

 ethical philosophers, though among them have 

 been included the noblest geniuses of humanity. 

 The subject-matter of ethics does not, like mathe 

 matics, admit of progressive determination by the 

 synthetic intuition of the inind. And the rea 

 son, since Kant s time, is not far to seek. Good 

 ness is not, like space, a constitutive, d priori form 

 of our sensuous experience. Any new proposi 

 tions you make about it, therefore, can never be 

 actualized into fact ; they remain a dialectical 

 exercise, or even a play of words. And so long 

 as that is so, no supply of first principles can con 

 fer upon ethics the scientific character of mathe 

 matics ; they stand as widely apart as analysis of 

 the known and synthesis of the unknown ; and if 

 you persist in calling them both demonstrative, 

 you must not overlook the vital difference that 

 the mathematician demonstrates by direct insight 

 into new relations, the moralist solely by unfold 

 ing what is already taken for granted. In the 

 nature of things, therefore, Locke s well-meant 

 attempt to introduce the procedure of mathemat 

 ics into ethics was doomed to miscarry. 



