Methods of Ethics. 33 



but for a moment of some of the questions dis 

 cussed in current treatises on the &quot;science of 

 ethics.&quot; What is the chief end of man ? Is the 

 will free or determined ? Is conscience innate or 

 acquired? Is moral law absolute or relative? 

 How did morality first come into existence ? Is 

 there any other good than pleasure ? This is a 

 sample, and but a sample, of the problems which 

 moralists complacently include in what they desig 

 nate ethical science. To questions like these an 

 swers are unhesitatingly given, even by agnostics, 

 who know that we cannot know anything but 

 phenomena. Manifestly the age which has wit 

 nessed the divorce of science and speculation in 

 physics, biology, and even psychology, has not in 

 ethics succeeded in keeping them asunder. And , 

 ethics will never rank as a positive science until, i 

 following the lead of jurisprudence and ethnol 

 ogy, it exorcise the spirit of speculation, and 

 enthrone the spirit of history as it is reflected in/ 

 the cognate investigations of Maine and Ihering, 

 of Tylor, Letourneau, and McLennan. 



I do not deny the possibility of a philosophy of 

 morals, or even of law or of culture. On the 

 contrary, I am convinced that every positive 

 science chemistry, physics, and mathematics 

 equally with jurisprudence and ethics leads up 

 3 



