THE RELATIONS OF ETHICS 393 



"it is of this nature or that," "it has such and such effects;" just 

 as a large part of our experience is of another order which may be 

 expressed in judgments of the form "it is good or evil," "it is fair or 

 foul." 



Nor does the way in which scientific judgments are elaborated 

 give any rationale of the distinction between good and evil. If we 

 ask of science "What is good?" it can give no relevant answer to the 

 question. Strictly speaking, it does not understand the meaning of 

 the question at all. The ball has gone out of bounds; and science can- 

 not touch it until it has been thrown back into the field. It can say 

 what is, and what will happen, and it can describe the methods or 

 laws by which things come to pass; that is all; it has only one law 

 for the just and the unjust. 



But science is very resourceful, and is able to deal with judgments 

 of worth from its own point of view. For these judgments also are 

 facts of individual experience: they are formed by human minds 

 under certain conditions, betray certain relations to the judgments 

 of fact with which they are associated, and are connected with an 

 environment of social institutions and physical conditions of life: 

 they have a history therefore. And in these respects they become 

 part of the material for science: and a description of them can be 

 given by psychological and historical methods. 



The general nature and results of the application of these methods 

 to ethics are too well known to need further comment, too well estab- 

 lished to require defense. But these results may be exaggerated and 

 have been exaggerated. When all has been said and done that the 

 historical method can say and do, the question "What is good?" 

 is found to remain exactly where it was. We may have learned much 

 as to the way in which certain kinds of conduct in certain circum- 

 stances promote certain ends, and as to the gradual changes which 

 men's ideas about good and evil, virtue and vice, have passed through; 

 but we have not touched the fundamental question which ethics has 

 to face the question of the nature of worth or goodness or duty. 



And yet it is this question only which gives significance to the 

 problems on which historical evolution has been able to throw light. 

 Moral ideas and moral institutions have all along been effective 

 factors in human development, as well as the subject of development 

 themselves. And the secret of their power has lain in this that men 

 have believed in those ideas as expressing a moral imperative or a 

 moral end, and that they have looked upon moral institutions as 

 embodiments of something which has worth for man or a moral 

 claim upon his devotion. These ideas and institutions would have 

 had no power apart from this belief in their validity. 



But was this belief true? Were the ideas or institutions valid? 

 This question the man of science, as sociologist or historian, does not 



