THE PERSONAL EQUATION IN ETHICS. 
FRANK CHAPMAN SHARP, PH. D., 
, Instructor in Philosophy , University of Wisconsin. 
Ethics as a science has to do with the phenomena of the ap¬ 
proval and disapproval of conduct—the source of the distinc¬ 
tion between right and wrong. Its fundamental problem as 
thus conceived is, What are the grounds, or what is the cause, 
of such judgments? Up to the present time the method of in¬ 
vestigation employed has been almost exclusively that of pure 
introspection. The reason for this fact is not far to seek. 
Approval and disapproval present themselves as facts of our 
own conscious life. We become aware of them, as we do of 
our intellectual processes by looking within, not without. We 
therefore naturally begin our search for the underlying first 
principles by making a complete list of our moral judg¬ 
ments and then analyzing them into their simplest elements. 
This having been satisfactorily accomplished our task seems fin¬ 
ished. For it is natural to suppose that the results thus ob¬ 
tained will hold for others as well as ourselves. For, it is ar¬ 
gued, we have an equal right with the logician and the mathe¬ 
matician to assume the similarity of human nature in all that 
is fundamental. But if so, then what I have found true for my¬ 
self, I may confidently assert of the race at large. Even if 
some savage tribe should be discovered that exhibited no traces 
of the moral sentiments which we find in ourselves, this need 
not affect the soundness of our conclusions. The tribe in question 
would simply be placed in the category of the non-moral, along 
with the ape and the tiger. There would accordingly seem no 
reason for finding fault with the programme announced by Marti- 
neau in the preface to his Types of Ethical Theory , where we 
read (p. vm): “Intellectual pride and self-ignorance alone ca 
