26 Comparison with Biology. 



caying sense.&quot; Beyond sensation, psychology does 

 not go ; but psycho-physics shows that an appar 

 ently simple sensation is itself made up of ele 

 ments Leibnitz s petites perceptions which may 

 be expressed for science in terms of the stimuli 

 in which they originate. But this regressive 

 analysis of the more complex into the less com 

 plex, until indecomposable factors are at last 

 reached, cannot be applied to moral phenomena 

 without making arbitrary and unwarrantable as 

 sumptions. This limitation of ethics, inherent in 

 its subject-matter, is constantly overlooked ; and 

 to the ignoring of it is due the diverse and mut 

 ually confuting systems of derivative morals. 



The farther we remove from simple observa 

 tion and classification, the greater is the differ 

 ence between the scientific character of ethics 

 and biology. And to the disadvantage already 

 noticed we have now to add another, which goes 

 to the very root of the matter in hand, and 

 seems to negate the possibility of turning the 

 ideal of physical ethics into an actuality. When 

 the biologist, besides dissecting complex phenom 

 ena into their elements, also demonstrates in a 

 long series of forms, existent or extinct, the grad 

 ual building up of the complex organisms out of 

 the simpler (by means, as he believes, of natural 



