SCIENTIFIC METHOD IN PHILOSOPHY 107 



" The Grand Augur, in his ceremonial robes, ap- 

 proached the shambles and thus addressed the pigs : 

 ' How can you object to die ? I shall fatten you for 

 three months. I shall discipline myself for ten days 

 and fast for three. I shall strew fine grass, and place 

 you bodily upon a carved sacrificial dish. Does not 

 this satisfy you ? ' 



Then, speaking from the pigs' point of view, he 

 continued : ' It is better, perhaps, after all, to live on 

 bran and escape the shambles. . . .' 



' But then,' added he, speaking from his own point 

 of view, ' to enjoy honour when alive one would 

 readily die on a war-shield or in the headsman's basket/ 



So he rejected the pigs' point of view and adopted 

 his own point of view. In what sense, then, was he 

 different from the pigs ? ' 



I much fear that the evolutionists too often resemble 

 the Grand Augur and the pigs. 



The ethical element which has been prominent in 

 many of the most famous systems of philosophy is, in 

 my opinion, one of the most serious obstacles to the 

 victory of scientific method in the investigation of philo- 

 sophical questions. Human ethical notions, as Chuang 

 Tzu perceived, are essentially anthropocentric, and 

 involve, when used in metaphysics, an attempt, how- 

 ever veiled, to legislate for the universe on the basis of the 

 present desires of men. In this way they interfere with 

 that receptivity to fact which is the essence of the 

 scientific attitude towards the world. To regard ethical 

 notions as a key to the understanding of the world is 

 essentially pre-Copernican. It is to make man, with the 

 hopes and ideals which he happens to have at the present 

 moment, the centre of the universe and the interpreter of 

 its supposed aims and purposes. Ethical metaphysics 

 is fundamentally an attempt, however disguised, to 



