ON HUMAN NATURE AND ITS CAPACITIES FOR VIRTUE. 117 



cendentalism, nor our ordinary intuitional morality, nor 

 any other system, will suit. We could not regulate our 

 life for a single day by any of them. And certain it is, 

 if any satisfactory ethical system be ever given to men, 

 it must take account of human nature, both as it now 

 shows itself to psychology, physiology, and the social 

 sciences, and as it has grown, as proved by historical 

 research ; in a word/it must first consider, and that care- 

 fully, what Science has to say on the subject. And 

 Science has at least something very pertinent, if not 

 something decisive, to say upon one old and very im- 

 portant question, on which every possible system of 

 ethics or theory of human conduct must embrace a side. 

 She has something to say worth hearing on the question 

 of free-will and necessity a subject so large and so 

 important as to merit a chapter to itself. 



