minent in modern than in ancient ethics-viz.: What is the source of moral knowledge? How are the laws of moral life communicated to us? How, and when, do we become conscious of the distinction between right and wrong? This is the question of conscience, sometimes called the moral faculty' or the 'moral sense.' One school of modern ethics derives its name from the answer it has given to this question-the 'Intuitional' school, which holds that the knowledge of moral laws is intuitive or a priori, in opposition to the view that such knowledge is a posteriori, or the result of moral experience. The contemporary representatives of the latter view are the evolutionary moralists, who insist upon tracing the evolution of the most complex and refined moral ideas from their earliest and simplest elements. The same question arises in a new form if, instead of speaking of conscience' as a special faculty or sense, we speak of the 'moral consciousness,' or of man as conscious of a moral ideal. The changing forms of this consciousness, the successive stages of man's moral experience, the reflection of his growing appreciation of the good in his conception of individual activities as good, the rationale of all this is the problem of ethics. (e) One of the main problems of ancient ethics was the inquiry into the nature of virtue and of the several virtues. To the Greeks' virtue' meant excellence' (aperń). The question, What is human virtue ? was therefore for them equivalent to the question, What is the characteristic human quality or excellence? What is the true type or ideal of human activity, which, according to his approximation to it, is the measure of the individual's excellence ? But again the measure of excellent activity can be found only in some supreme end of activity-some chief good, in obedience to which the several excellences are reduced to the unity of some all-containing excellence. A subordinate phase of the problem of virtue has been the differentiation of the 'cardinal' or root-virtues from the secondary or derivative; and the relative importance attached to the several virtues is highly significant of the level of moral attainment. The Greek appreciation of the intellectual life, for example, is reflected in the Aristotelian subordination of practical' or 'moral' virtue to 'intellectual' or theoretical, while the tendency of the modern Christian mind to depreciate the philosophic and scientific as well as the artistic life, has led to the omission of excellence in these fields from its scheme of the virtues. The clue to the change of emphasis is again the changed conception of the good, -the changed view of the meaning of life itself. (f) In modern ethics the problem has more generally assumed the form of an inquiry into the nature and basis of duty or moral obligation; and the attempt has been made to construct a scheme of duties rather than a system of virtues. While virtue is a form or quality of character, duty is a form or quality of conduct; the one refers to the agent, the other to the activity. But we have seen (§ 1) that conduct and character are inseparable, the one being the expression of the other. Their unifying principle must therefore be the samesome central and all-containing end or good, the unconditional imperativeness of whose claim upon the agent constitutes his duty, and loyal obedience to which is the essential human excellence or virtue. The idea of duty or obligation is the idea of imperativeness or ought-ness, of the Thou shalt' as supplanting in the moral life the 'Thou must' of the life of nature. But even Kant, with all his insistence upon the 'categorical imperativeness' of the moral life, traces the absoluteness of its obligation to the absoluteness or finality of the end of moral activity, to the unconditional value of man as an end-in-himself. (g) In both ancient and modern ethics the problem has always been apt to centre in the question of the place of pleasure in the moral life. This question has divided moralists of both periods into two opposing schools, the one of which has accorded to pleasure the supreme place and recognised in it the only final Good, while the other has either given it a secondary place or found in it no ethical value at all. The advocates of pleasure may be called the Hedonists (ndový, pleasure); while the opposing school may be called the Rationalists, since it is in the life of reason that they find the absolute good which they miss in the life of pleasure. (h) While the ethical thought of the ancient world is, in spite of its political character, prevailingly egoistic or individualistic, modern moralists have found a new problem (or rather a new aspect of the old problem) in the relation of the individual to society, of the individual self to other individuals. The question has arisen whether the individual or society is the true ethical unit, whether my good or the good of all is the good. In the earlier British moralists this question takes the form of the relation of self-love' to 'benevolence,' and resolves itself into the problem of the true moral ratio of self-interest' to 'disinterestedness.' In the ethics of the more recent hedonistic school, the problem has received much prominence; for if the good is pleasure, the further question arises, Whose pleasure? The most recent answer is that the general happiness is alone to be regarded as absolutely good, and the happiness of the individual as of subordinate and relative value. In opposition to the older egoistic Hedonism, the new Hedonism—that of J. S. Mill and his successors-has signalised its altruistic character by the new name of 'Utilitarianism.' 6 (i) The problem of altruism is also the problem of self-sacrifice. In the conflict of interests, self-interest must be sacrificed to the general interest, if the general happiness is to be attained. But even within the circle of egoistic or individualistic thought the problem of the ethical value of self-sacrifice arises. The real issue between the hedonistic and rationalistic schools is the question, Which self is worth realising? Which self ought to be sacrificed to the other-the sentient or the rational self? And a further question arises as to the reality or unreality, and the absoluteness or the relativity, of the self-sacrifice. The extreme hedonistic school (the Cyrenaics) advocated the real and absolute sacrifice of the rational or reflective to the sentient or unreflective self; the life of the one implied the death of the other. The extreme rationalistic view (that of Kant) is that the sentient self ought to be absolutely sacrificed to the rational, that the one must die if the other is to live. A more moderate form of egoistic Hedonism (the Epicurean), holding that the virtuous life is the calculating life which makes the most of its opportunities, has maintained the relativity of selfsacrifice; the less pleasure is sacrificed, it is said, to the greater. A more moderate Rationalism has also refused to see anything absolute or permanent in the sacrifice of the sentient to the rational self. The problem of selfsacrifice is indissolubly bound up with that of selfrealisation. And the ultimate problem of the good is at the same time, as we have seen, the problem of the self. LITERATURE. Aristotle, Ethics, bk. i. ch. i. -iv., vii., viii., xii. H. Sidgwick, Methods of Ethics, bk. i. ch. i. §§ 1-3. J. S. Mackenzie, Manual of Ethics, Introd., ch. i. J. H. Muirhead, Elements of Ethics, bk. i. ch. i., ii. ; bk. ii. ch. i., ii. S. Alexander, Moral Order and Progress, bk. i. ch. ii. 24 CHAPTER II. THE METHOD OF ETHICS. 1. Ethics a normative science. Is the true method of ethics the method of science or that of philosophy? Our answer to this question must determine our general view of the ethical problem, and cannot fail to affect the solution which we reach. The characteristic tendency of our time to reduce all thought to the scientific form, and to draw the line sharply between natural or positive science, on the one hand, and metaphysics or philosophical speculation, on the other, has made itself felt in ethics, which is now defined as 'moral science' rather than as 'moral philosophy,' its older designation. Nor is this usage of terms a complete novelty in ethical literature. Aristotle, the father of the science, clearly distinguished ethics as the science of the good (for man) from metaphysics or 'first philosophy,' whose task was the investigation of the ultimate nature of things, the absolute good, or the good of the universe itself. In the older English ethics we find the same limitation of the inquiry, and a frequent adoption of the psychological method. It is to Kant and his successors, in Germany and in England, that the encroachment of metaphysics upon ethics is chiefly due. Kant does not separate the science of ethics from the metaphysic of ethics, which is, for him, the only legitimate metaphysic. The influence of Kant in this respect is evident in the intuitional |