Page:Philosophical Review Volume 12.djvu/649

No. 6.] statements about strychnine is descriptive, and purely so, the last no less than any of the previous ones. But to most persons there is a very decided difference in the statements. The last has a tendency to convert itself into an imperative. Now why this difference ? The answer is easy. None of the items of information above given concerning strychnine except the last makes any appeal to the desires and will of most persons. The last item of information, however, has a very direct relation to normal human desires. Very few men want to be poisoned, hence the fact that strychnine poisons can be indirectly stated in a prohibition: "Don't eat it." The prohibition, however, taken literally as it stands, is not an expression of knowledge, but of will—the will to live and let live. This will abhors strychnine because it is known that strychnine tends to antagonize the will. Knowledge here determines the direction of the will, but the knowledge is not will, and the expression of the knowledge (in the indicative) must not be confounded with the expression of will (in the imperative). Science does not lay down the rule to avoid eating strychnine; it ascertains the fact that the man who eats strychnine, except in very small doses, dies. In view of this scientific information, the normal human will lays down the law to itself not to take strychnine as food. We may generalize from this case and say that no science lays down any rules whatever, hence, if a normative science is defined as a science that lays down rules, it must be replied that it is by that token not a science.

But while a science may not lay down rules in the sense of imposing them upon men, it may have rules of procedure as its object matter. There are many sciences of this kind. For instance, the science of jurisprudence does not make the laws of the land. It is nothing but the more or less systematic knowledge of the various laws that have prevailed and do prevail, of the various tendencies for good or evil possessed by these laws, and of the various objects of juridical will these laws indicate; in fine, it is knowledge of the various principles of law. Jurisprudence may disclose the disastrous results of a certain type of laws, as, for example, punitive laws impossible of enforcement; but as a science it goes no further. It does not proceed to