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 ETHICS

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ETHICS

life of man, it is not a single science but a complexus of sciences; and among these, so far as the natural order is concerned, ethics has the first claim.

II. SouiicES AND Methods of Ethics. — The sources of ethics are partly man's own experience and partly the principles and truths proposed by other philosophical disciplines (logic and metaphysics). Ethics takes its origin from the empirical fact that certain general principles and concepts of the moral order are common to all peoples at all times. This fact has indeed been frequently disputed, but recent ethnological research has placed it beyond the possi- bility of doubt. All nations distinguish between what is good and what is bad, between good men and bad men, between virtue and vice; they are all agreed in this: that the good is worth striving for, and that evil must be shunned, that the one deserves praise, the other, blame. Though in individual cases thej' may not be one in denominating the same thing good or evil, they are nevertheless agreed as to the general principle, that good is to be done and evil avoided. Vice everywhere seeks to hide itself or to put on the mask of virtue ; it is a universally recognized principle, that we should not do to others what we would not wish them to do to us. With the aid of the truths laid down in logic and metaphysics, ethics proceeds to give a thorough explanation of this undeniable fact, to trace it back to its ultimate causes, then to gather from fundamental moral principles certain conclusions which will direct man, in the various circumstances and relations of life, how to shape his own conduct towards the attainment of the end for which he was created. Thus the proper method of ethics is at once specula- tive and empirical ; it draws upon experience and metaphysics. Supernatural Christian Revelation is not a proper source of ethics. Only those conclu- sions properly belong to ethics which can be reached with the help of experience and philosophical prin- ciples. The Christian philosopher, however, may not ignore supernatural revelation, but must at least recognize it as a negative norm, inasmuch as he is not to advance any assertion in evident contradiction to the revealed truth of Christianity. God is the fountain-head of all truth — whether natural, as made known by Creation, or supernatural as revealed through Christ and the Prophets. As our intellect is an image of the Divine Intellect, so is all certain scientific knowledge the reflex and interpretation of the Creator's thoughts embodied in His creatm'es, a participation in His eternal wisdom. God cannot reveal super- naturalfy and command us to believe on His authority anything that contradicts the thoughts expressed by Him in His creatures, and which, with the aid of the faculty of reason which He has given us, we can discern in His works. To assert the contrary would be to deny God's omniscience and veracity, or to suppose that God was not the source of all truth. A conflict, therefore, between faith and science is impossible, and hence the Christian philosopher has to refrain from advancing any assertion which would be evidently antagonistic to certain revealed truth. Should his researches lead to conclusions out of harmony with faith, he is to take it for granted that some error has crept into his deductions, just as the mathematician whose calculations openly contradict the facts of expefience must be satisfied that his demonstration is at fault.

Aher what has been said, the following methods of ethics must be rejected as unsound. (1) Pure Ration- alism. — This system makes reason the sole source of truth, and therefore at the very outset excludes every reference to Christian Revelation, branding any such reference as degrading and hampering free scientific investigation. The supreme law of science is not freedom, but truth. It is not derogatory to the true dignity and freedom of science to abstain from assert- ing what, according to Christian Revelation, is mani-

festly erroneous. (2) Pure Empiricism, which would erect the entire structure of ethics exclusively on the foundation of experience, must also be rejected. Experience can teU us merely of present or past phenomena; but as to what, of necessity, and univer- sally, must, or ought to, happen in the future, experi- ence can give as no clue without bringing in the aid of necessary and universal principles. Closely allied to Emijiricism is Ilistoricism, which considers history as the exclusive soiuce of ethics. What has been said of Empiricism may also be applied to Historicism. His- tory is concerned with what has happened in the past and only too often has to rehearse the moral aberrations of mankind. (.3) Positivism is a variety of Empiricism ; it seeks to emancipate ethics from metaphysics and base it on facts alone. No science can be con- structed on the mere foundation of facts, and inde- pendently of metaphysics. Everj-science mast set out from evident principles, which form the basis of all cer- tain cognition. Ethics especially is impossible without metaphysics, since it is according to the metaphj'sical view we take of the world that ethics shapes itself. Whoever considers man as nothing else than a more highly developed brute will hold different ethical views from one who discerns in man a creature fashioned to the image and likeness of God, possessing a spiritual, immortal soul and destined to eternal life; whoever refuses to recognize the freedom of the will destroys the very foundation of ethics. "Whether man was created by God or possesses a spiritual, unmortal soul which is endowed with free will, or is essentially differ- ent from brute creation, all these are questions per- taining to metaphysics. Anthropology, moreover, is necessarily presupposed by ethics. No rules can be prescribed for man's actions, unless his nature isclearly understood. (4) Another untenable system is Tra- ditionalism, which in France, dm-ing the first half of the nineteenth century, counted many adherents (among others, de Bonald, Bautain), and which advanced the doctrine that complete certaintj' in religious and moral questions was not to be attained by the aid of reason alone, but only by the light of revelation as made known to us through tradition. They failed to see that for all reasonable belief certain knowledge of the existence of God and of the fact of revelation is neces- sarily presupposed, and this knowledge cannot be gathered from revelation. Fideism, or, as Paulsen designated it, the Irrationalism of many Protestants, also denies the ability of reason to fm-nish certainty in matters relating to God and religion. With Kant, it teaches that reason does not rise above the phenom- ena of the visible world; faith alone can lead us into the realm of the supersensible and instruct us in matters moral and religious. This faith, however, is not the acceptance of truth on the strength of external authority, but rather consi-sts in certain appreciative judgments, i.e. assumptions or convictions which are the result of each one's own inner experiences, and which have, therefore, for him a precise worth, and correspond to his own peculiar temperament. Since these persuasions are not supposed to come within the range of reason, exception to them cannot be taken on scientific grounds. According to this opinion, re- ligion and morals are relegated to pure subjectivism and lose all their objectivity and universality of value. III. Historical View of Ethics. — .\s ethics is the philoso])hical treatment of the moral order, its history does not consist in narrating the views of morality en- tertained by different nations at different times; this is properly the scope of the history of civilization, and of ethnology. The history of ethics is concerned solely with the various philosophical systems which in the course of time have been elaborated with refer- ence to the moral order. Hence the opinions ad- vanced by the wise men of antiquity, such as Pytha- . goras (5S2-500 ii. c), Heraclitus (.535-475 B. c), Con- fucius (558-479 B. c), scarcely belong to the history