Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 12.djvu/263

 250 W. L. DAVIDSON : or would tend in any way to lower the pupil's tone or debase his nature, must be rejected. Lastly, Ethics has a certain relation to ^Esthetics : by which I mean that there is such a thing as moral "beauty. It would be quite wrong indeed to confound the Beautiful with the Good ; but there is, undoubtedly, a well-marked aesthetic aspect of morals, and this needs to be taken account of. Now, if all these connexions between Ethics and the allied sciences exist, it is obvious that a bare seized classification cannot adequately represent them. By enumerating the kindred sciences in successive order thus psychology, sociology, jurisprudence, Ethics, metaphysics, religion, political economy, education, aesthetics you do not bring out the fact that Ethics is not dependent upon metaphysics (which comes immediately behind it in the enumeration) in at all the same way as it is on psychology, sociology and jurisprudence ; nor that the dependence of religion on ethics is of quite another stamp from that of political economy and education on ethics ; nor that the relation of ethics and aesthetics is quite different from both. Your single line is altogether inadequate and misleading. Clearly, a second line is needed intersecting the other, before we have clear- ness given to the expression ; and even this must be supple- mented by other lines inserted at an angle. Thus, let the horizontal line in the accompanying diagram represent the Metaphysics or Ontology. Psych., Soc., Jurisp., ETHICS, Eeligion. Political Economy. Education. order of dependence proper, the vertical line that of implication, and the inclined line that of indirect contribution. Then, the sciences on the left side of ETHICS in the horizontal line (psychology, sociology, &c.) would be those that lead up to Ethics and on which Ethics is dependent ; that on the right side (religion) would be the science dependent upon Ethics : the upper part of the vertical line (where ontology is) would denote sciences whose truths are implicated in ethics ; the under part those (education, &c.) into which ethics enters : and the line or lines striking at an angle would serve to show