SCIENTIFIC METHOD IN PHILOSOPHY 109 



microbes. The view of the world taken by the philosophy 

 derived from ethical notions is thus never impartial 

 and therefore never fully scientific. As compared with 

 science, it fails to achieve the imaginative liberation from 

 self which is necessary to such understanding of the 

 world as man can hope to achieve, and the philosophy 

 which it inspires is always more or less parochial, 

 more or less infected with the prejudices of a time and 

 a place. 



I do not deny the importance or value, within its own 

 sphere, of the kind of philosophy which is inspired by 

 ethical notions. The ethical work of Spinoza, for ex 

 ample, appears to me of the very highest significance, 

 but what is valuable in such work is not any meta 

 physical theory as to the nature of the world to which 

 it may give rise, nor indeed anything which can be 

 proved or disproved by argument. What is valuable is 

 the indication of some new way of feeling towards life 

 and the world, some way of feeling by which our own 

 existence can acquire more of the characteristics which 

 we must deeply desire. The value of such work, how 

 ever immeasurable it is, belongs with practice and not 

 with theory. Such theoretic importance as it may 

 possess is only in relation to human nature, not in re 

 lation to the world at large. The scientific philosophy, 

 therefore, which aims only at understanding the world 

 and not directly at any other improvement of human 

 life, cannot take account of ethical notions without being 

 turned aside from that submission to fact which is the 

 essence of the scientific temper. 



