PART II. 



THE APPLICATION OF THE EVOLUTIONARY 

 METHOD TO AN ETHICAL CONTENT. 



I. INTRODUCTION. 



Up to the present we have been considering two aspects 

 of the particular question under discussion, namely: first, the 

 psychological assumptions derived from the Association 

 School, which were adopted by those who tried to explain 

 mental facts on the basis of a development which was assumed 

 to begin with the physical and physiological orders; second, 

 we have outlined the contribution of some of the prominent 

 evolutionistic writers to a theory of conscious facts. 



We have been content to discuss this method of approach- 

 ing the problem, from a somewhat abstract point of view, 

 dealing but little with any particular psychological or ethical 

 content. This is possible so long as the mere question of 

 method is under discussion. It is, however, not equally con- 

 vincing when one wishes to discuss the applicability of such a 

 method to a somewhat specific content, as, foi example, the 

 ethical. While we have found it possible to decide that such 

 a method cannot deal with psychical facts, because it seeks 

 to explain such facts by means of physiological processes, 

 which are admitted by evolutionists to belong to a different 

 order of being, we have not gone into the question of any 

 specific failure to deal with an ethical content, and this, accord- 

 ing to the title given to the investigation, was accepted as the 

 peculiar task to be solved. Before, however, one can discuss 

 the applicability of such a method to an ethical content, it is 

 necessary to ascertain somewhat exactly what ethical writers 

 have understood by an ethical content; and it is further 

 necessary to decide what we can accept after a careful in- 

 vestigation of these ethical theories as a reasonable character- 

 istic for such a content. We purpose, then, to discuss this 

 question of a specific ethical content by setting forth in put- 

 line some of the outstanding points in the history of British 

 ethics. 



