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529 thoroughly understanding them. But it would not be able to argue from the inadequacy of mechanical cause to the necessity of purpose; for it would be without the experience from which the conception of purpose is formed. Again, in our moral experience, we distinguish purposes as good and bad and better. But we might imagine an intelligence with the power of understanding things as manifesting purpose which might yet regard all purposes with indifferent gaze and draw no distinction of good and evil. It might recognize the conflict inherent in such a conception without being able to compare purposes in respect of their goodness.

I maintain, therefore, that, when a metaphysical theory makes the transition from non-ethical conceptions about reality to the conception of goodness, it does so by taking into account an aspect of experience which it had previously omitted from consideration. The conception goodness is based upon the facts of the moral consciousness; in particular, upon the consciousness of moral approbation and disapprobation. Whatever view may be arrived at as to the place of goodness in reality, judgments about goodness form part of the experience which has to be interpreted by philosophy. So far, therefore, from ethics and metaphysics being mutually indifferent, a complete metaphysics cannot disregard the data of the moral consciousness, and must accordingly include a metaphysic of ethics. On the other hand, a metaphysic which proceeds upon data of experience so limited as to exclude the facts of the moral consciousness cannot issue in a legitimate ethical doctrine.

The preceding view may be illustrated by a short examination of the ethical method of T. H. Green. Green's book still holds the field amongst the speculative systems of ethics produced by the last generation; it is commonly taken as the representative of metaphysical ethics; it is sometimes interpreted as if the author deduced his ethical positions from metaphysical principles of a merely theoretical nature; and it is at any rate true that he definitely bases his ethical doctrine upon a certain metaphysical theory. His own summary of this is as follows: "That the existence of one connected world, which is the