Page:Philosophical Review Volume 14.djvu/652

636 with a particular kind of modifiability, e.g., associative memory, as does Loeb, is to make it the test of a particular grade of consciousness. The author himself believes that no single satisfactory criterion of the psychic can be found. The tests proposed in the article are to be used in connection with each other, the three functional criteria indicating distinct grades of consciousness.

In ethical as in every other scientific investigation, a sound and precise method is of prime importance. Ethical method hitherto has been a compromise between old and new ideas. To deal with the complex nature and accumulated mass of ethical facts a consistent method of research is required. Ethical science deals properly with many sets of facts: with the psychology of the moral life, with the concrete social and moral experience of the present, with the history of moral practice and its development in different races and during different epochs of human history, and with the systems of great ethical theorists. The starting-point of investigation must be a preliminary and purely provisional hypothesis, furnished by previous experience, which accepts certain facts and their apparent relations as the field to be studied. The accumulation of material is accomplished by observations, systematic, varied, accurate, and, as far as possible, complete. With this accumulation of material proceeds its organization. Hypotheses founded on cautious generalizations are subjected to a continuous process of doubt, correction, and verification by further observation and induction. Finally, the process of deduction may safely be employed. With the use of such a method may be predicted a progress in ethical science comparable to the development of physics since Aristotle.

Friendship and sociality, though often confused, differ greatly in significance. The latter is synonymous with association, solidarity, or altruism, and has reference to a vague, external bond between individuals in opposition to the intimate, sympathetic relations of friendship. It is an anti-individualistic, impersonal sentiment, finding its most abstract form in a general love for humanity or humanism, which emphasizes society and disregards the individual, opposing free commerce between individuals. Friendship, on the other hand, is the expression of spontaneous and individualistic feelings. Spontaneity, liberty, and profound intimacy are its essential characteristics and show its anti-social trend. Strife, as Nietzsche points out, is necessary for friendship, but mistrust, the most characteristic sentiment of ordinary sociality, is excluded. As it is a principle of