Page:An introduction to ethics.djvu/21

 Pole? It might be replied that Scott and Amundsen believed that the discovery of the Pole had a value-for-life because of the geographical, geological, and meteorological discoveries made by the Polar parties; and, quite apart from the value of these researches, the example of unselfishness and sturdiness and heroism shown by the explorers had a real value-for-life for the rest of humanity. It may, of course, often happen that an action which seemed to the agent to have some value-for-life really has none. But a man always aims at what he believes will have some value-for-life.

We must beware of interpreting value-for-life in too narrow a way. What has value-for-life is not simply to be identified with what is useful. What is useful does have value-for-life; but many things which are not useful also have value-for-life. Value-for-life is a more comprehensive term than usefulness, and includes much that is not useful. Music, art, and literature, for instance, are not useful in the ordinary sense of the word, but they certainly have great value-for-life.

Everything, then, that man does is done because it is conceived to have a value-for-life. And this is a value for human life. Every action and judgment has some relation to man, and is done with reference to what is good for man. But what is the good for man? If all action and all science have a value-for-life, there must be some good for man. The question what that good is is the question that ethics asks and tries to answer. What is the good of human life? What is the aim of human life? What is man's chief end?