Methods of Ethics. 2 5 



It will be conceded that, so far as observation 

 and classification go, moral phenomena are not 

 less manageable than biological ; and in this re 

 spect both sciences stand on the same level as 

 logic and psychology. At the next stage, how 

 ever, a difference emerges. After biological 

 phenomena have been noted and grouped, they 

 may be resolved into simpler elements, as the tis 

 sue, e.g., into cells. And in chemistry, though 

 obviously not in biology, it is possible to verify 

 the analysis by a reproduction of the complex 

 through synthesis of its resultant elements. But 

 moral phenomena are not susceptible of a similar 

 analysis. Every resolution of morality, or of any 

 part of it, into something else must needs be arti 

 ficial and arbitrary. You do not here know what 

 is simple and what compound. In this respect 

 ethics falls behind even psychology in its amena 

 bility to scientific methods. The psychologist, 

 starting from the side of objective science, is wont 

 to take sensation as his datum, and from that 

 stand-point is justified in regarding it as better 

 known than any other mental experience ; so that 

 an explanation of the higher intellectual pro 

 cesses and products may always be given by re 

 solving them into this datum, as when Hobbes, 

 following Aristotle, describes imagination as &quot; de- 



