Page:Philosophical Review Volume 12.djvu/651

No. 6.] What has been said makes it evident that jurisprudence and ethics are abstract. They do not give expression to the whole psychic attitude of the scientist toward the objects of his investigation. The jurisconsult, unless all milk of human kindness is dried up in him, is not only a man who knows law, but also one who likes some kind of law and some principles of legislation better than others. His legal knowledge is only a part of his mental endowment, for to a scientist science may not be the only thing of value in the universe. So to the ethical scientist practical moral questions may be of stupendous interest. He may be the supporter of a crusade against intemperance or impure civil service; but this fact would be due to his temperament and general affectional nature, enlightened, it is true, but not created, by his ethical knowledge. An ethicist is not ipso facto a man of high moral ideas, but his scientific impartiality need not make him a practically impartial onlooker in the theatre of the moral life. As a scientist he may be impartial, as a man he may have his decided preferences. But his actual preferences must not be allowed to interfere with his impartial scientific attitude. An unimpassioned survey of all the accessible facts, unbiased generalization from the facts to general principles,—this is the task of ethics and this task is entirely descriptive.

But such description does not exclude scientific criticism. It is compatible with an appreciation of objective values. This may not at first be clear, for are not all values subjective? Yes, in a certain sense values are subjective. But in that same sense it would be hard to find anything objective. Value may be as objective as color. No ornithologist is deterred from describing orioles as orange-breasted, because, forsooth, to the color-blind man they may be dirty gray. Again, the chemist does not feel it necessary to qualify as subjective the statement that hydrogen sulphide has a stinking smell, because only to normal olfactory organs is the smell disagreeable. Many—if not all—objective scientific statements are objective in the sense of being valid of all normal human experience. Now objects have value that is objective in the same sense. For instance, money has an objective value, not because apart from the affective natures