Page:Philosophical Review Volume 2.djvu/545

531 that in all choice, the thing chosen is what, given the man and the circumstances in which he is placed, must be chosen, that it is no more possible he should act otherwise than that the lily should produce rose-buds.

All this would probably long ago have been assented to as an unavoidable corollary of the universality of the reign of law in nature which science has disclosed, had it not been felt that a belief in man's responsibility is necessary to morality, and that such responsibility presupposes a freedom which is incompatible with determinism. It has constantly been asserted that right and wrong, good and evil, are notions which lose all ethical significance if human actions and thoughts are regarded as simply the natural and necessary effects of antecedent conditions, and that, therefore, the whole fabric of our current system of morals must totter, and may eventually fall in ruins, if we take away the belief in human freedom, with its logical consequent, the responsibility of each individual for his own character and conduct.

There is a certain amount of truth in such statements. A thorough and careful application of scientific principles and methods to the mass of vague, ill-defined, and sometimes mutually incompatible notions which go to make up the popular theory of morals, would certainly introduce into it fresh difficulties, and would bring into prominence many inconsistencies that are now only latent. It does not, however, follow, because our present uncritical ethics would have to be overhauled and perhaps to a large extent reconstructed, that morality itself would be endangered by the process. Our practical ethics at present has advanced beyond our ethical theory, we are building better than we know. The work of a moral philosophy is to establish such general principles as may afford a rational sup- port for our present efforts in practical ethics, and a guide for the formation of moral standards and judgments. And for this purpose we must accept the validity of the scientific category of causation.

In truth, the defense of a moral theory which demands the shutting out of science from the ethical sphere,—which says,