34 Scientific and Speculative Ethics. 



inevitably to a TT^COTT; ^tXocro^ta, towards which I 

 am so far from assuming an indifference that I 

 hold, with Kant, such indifference an impossi 

 bility to human nature, and those who profess it 

 unconscious, instead of conscious, metaphysicians. 

 But I am sure facts and science must precede theo 

 ries and philosophy. And the facts with which the 

 moralist has to deal seem to me, not merely more 

 complex, but infinitely more numerous and varied? 

 than is generally supposed. Just as philology was 

 retarded for centuries by the dogma that Hebrew 

 was the parent of all human languages, so ethical 

 science is now hampered by the assumption that 

 its subject-matter can be found in the moral con 

 sciousness of the individual alone. For that moral 

 consciousness is but the reflex of particular social 

 conditions, and, like them, has had a history which 

 needs to be traced. Nor is it at any stage of its 

 development exactly the same as another moral 

 consciousness, under other skies, at other lati 

 tudes, in different environments, and within differ 

 ent civilizations. Moral phenomena may vary as 

 dialects vary, and until those varieties are observed 

 and compared, and their developments followed 

 out, anything like a philosophy of morals is im 

 possible. Ethics, as the comparative history of 

 universal morality, is the vestibule to the temple 



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