Methods of Ethics. 29 



it is not inconceivable that the method might be 

 so applied as to produce a genuine science, but 

 of narrower limits in space and time than current 

 evolutionary ethics is wont to set. Such re 

 strictions are given, indeed, in the very subject- 

 matter of ethics. For moral phenomena imply 

 moral beings ; and since, as Darwin himself tells 

 us, &quot;a moral being is one who is capable of com 

 paring his past and future actions or motives, and 

 of approving or disapproving of them,&quot; and &quot; we 

 have no reason to suppose that any of the lower 

 animals have this capacity,&quot; it follows that the 

 science of morals should take cognizance only of 

 &quot; man, who alone,&quot; as Darwin emphatically adds, 

 &quot; can with certainty be ranked as a moral being.&quot; 

 There is, therefore, nothing to carry the scien 

 tific moralist out of the human sphere. It is 

 different with the biologist. The human hand is 

 constructed on the same pattern as the hand of a 

 monkey, or the foot of a horse, or the wing of a 

 bat ; and the human embryo is at first hardly dis 

 tinguishable from the embryo of a dog, or seal, 

 or reptile ; so that any scientific explanation of 

 man s bodily organism is inadequate, if not im 

 possible, without reference to the lower animals. 

 But in ethics such reference seems little less than 

 a vain parade. You may of course study the 



