POWELL] PHILOLOGY CLXI 



its spacial significance, philosophy is apt to degenerate into 

 metaphysie. 



We naiffht g-o on to set forth the nse of form and its deriva- 

 fives in other senses than that of spacial form, and still the 

 subject would not be exhausted — not even in a great tome. 

 Words in English derived from languages other tlian the Anglo- 

 Saxon are subject to the same confusion of meaning. Mor- 

 phology is the science of form, and yet the term is used as the 

 name of a journal which deals mainly with the genesis and 

 evolution of plants and animals, and which treats of the 

 forms of plants and animals in but comparatively insignificant 

 degree, for It is devoted mainh" to the genesis of function. 

 Metamorphosis is used not oialy to signify change of form, but 

 also the change of all other properties. 



This habit of using words with figurative meanings leads to 

 bad reasoning. Spencer, in the first volume of The Principles 

 of Ethics, presents a masterly chapter on the relativity of pains 

 and pleasures. Here, in the use of the term absolute, he dis- 

 tinguishes it from the relative by properly implying that what 

 is relative must also be aljsolute. The same act is absolute as 

 an act, though relative in its consequences. 



Subsequently in his work Spencer sometimes uses absolute 

 in another sense. Thus he speaks of "absolute ethics," mean- 

 ing thereby conduct perfectly or superlativeh' ethical, and he 

 uses the term "relatively ethical" to mean imperfectly ethical. 

 No harm would be done by tlie use of the words in this manner 

 did he not use a doctrine wliich he had previously developed 

 about the absolute and the relative in ethics, as if he had 

 demonstrated the same doctrine about the perfect and the 

 imperfect in ethics; hence his consideration of perfect and 

 imperfect ethics is vitiated. 



Please permit the expression of an opinion about the origin 

 of a fundamental fallacy in Spencer's Principles of Ethics: He 

 fails to discover the true nature of ethics and its origin in 

 religion, primarily by the failure to discriminate between 

 perfect and imperfect on the one hand, and absolute and rela- 

 tive on the other; hence he confounds ethics with justice. 

 The principles of justice are evolved under the sanctions of 



20 ETH— 03 XI 



