Page:Philosophical Review Volume 12.djvu/657

No. 6.] of misguided morality is scientific ethical knowledge. It is, of course, not the only corrective. He would be a rabid intellectualist who should suppose that knowledge is the panacea of moral ills. The unconscious operation of natural laws does much toward eliminating noxious ideas. Many forms of harmful morality have been eliminated by natural selection. Races that have sunk deep in moral error have often lost stamina, and proved easy prey, by reason of their very perversity, to races of a better moral fibre. Again, unconscious imitation and appropriation of alien ideals have been mighty instruments of moral reform. Good communications have often purified bad manners and bad morals. But even here more or less systematic criticism of two conflicting codes has perhaps always played a part in helping to the installation of the better type of ideals. But granting that there are always many agencies at work for the betterment of morality, other than scientific criticism of morality, this criticism is and has been an extremely salutary influence in moral progress, in that it weakens the hold of blind and baneful prejudice upon the minds of men. Ethics, then, helps men to emancipate themselves from the tyranny of false and vicious ideals.

But its effects may be positive as well as negative, although, of course, here as elsewhere the positive and the negative go hand in hand. The positive work of ethics in moral reconstruction consists in the sometimes slow, sometimes rapid, emergence of new and better ideals, suggested by study of actual moral conditions. Liberation from prejudice would do little good if something affirmative, some positive ideals newly espoused, did not take their place. It would be the old story of casting a devil out of a house and leaving it swept and garnished, only to furnish habitation for seven other devils worse than the first. The empty room must be filled with something better, and scientific knowledge will often reveal what that something better should be. Thus the abolition of indiscriminate private charity might easily lead to reckless indifference to misfortune something must be done in a wise way for those who cannot take care of themselves. A careful study of the actual conditions, and conservative experimentation, may suggest a way in which the