Page:Philosophical Review Volume 2.djvu/678

664 demand or admit solution. The great need of ethical theory to-day is a conception of the ideal as a working ideal–a conception which shall have the same value and which shall play the same part in ethics that the working hypothesis performs for the natural sciences. The fixed ideal is as distinctly the bane of ethical science to-day as the fixed universe of mediaevalism was the bane of the natural science of the Renascence. As natural science found its outlet by admitting no idea, no theory, as fixed by itself, demanding of every idea that it become fruitful in experiment, so must ethical science purge itself of all conceptions, of all ideals, save those which are developed within and for the sake of practice. ..