Page:Philosophical Review Volume 2.djvu/66

52 While the term 'law' is generally used in ethics, as above described, in the jural sense, we should not forget the existence of laws in the physical sense. In moral phenomena we find certain uniformities of sequence as well as in physical phenomena. Conduct and character are causally related, and this relation it would seem possible to express by general formulae, i.e., by laws. The general form of such a natural law of ethics is: Such and such conduct produces such and such states of consciousness and such and such character. Selfishness brings unhappiness; violation of duty is followed by stings of conscience; lying degrades character, — these are examples of laws in the moral sphere in just the same sense, and of just the same validity and necessity, as the facts that ice melts at thirty-two degrees, and that a falling body increases in velocity as the square root of the distance. Spencer says: "I conceive it to be the business of Moral Science to deduce, from the laws of life and the conditions of existence, what kinds of action necessarily tend to produce happiness, and what kinds to produce unhappiness Having done this, its deductions are to be recognized as laws of conduct." Now, without making this the whole business of ethics, it is certainly a part of its work to discover these 'laws of conduct.' We may not believe, as Mr. Spencer seems to, that these laws can be deduced from biology. We may have to discover them empirically rather than deductively. We may, too, be more interested to know what sort of conduct makes for the 'health of the social tissue' or for perfection of character; but, at any rate, besides investigating ends and motives, ethics must formulate the laws of conduct by which the chosen ends may be attained. In logic and aesthetics, and indeed in all the practical sciences, we find this same double use of the term 'law.' The laws of logic, as statements of the mind's procedure in thinking, are necessary sequences of the same type as physical laws. But when from these laws of thought we form rules of argument, we have imperatives which we bind upon ourselves in view of certain ends, i.e., laws in the jural sense of the concept. So, too, in aesthetics, from the principles of beauty we