Page:Philosophical Review Volume 6.djvu/301

No. 3.] with itself. The true method of ethics is the Socratic method of a thoroughgoing and exhaustive cross-examination of men's actual moral judgments, with a view to their systematization. And though the mere summation of these judgments will not constitute their system, the system can be constructed only on the basis of a catholic study of the actual moral judgments. We must, as Professor Sharp has urged, get rid of 'the baneful influence of the personal equation'; we must add to the 'introspective' method the 'objective' method. "The student of ethics has not finished his work until he has made an exhaustive study of the moral judgments of examples of all types of human nature." "How to evolve from this multiplicity of apparently incompatible principles a consistent and universally valid system of moral judgments ... is a question for what may be termed logical or systematic, as opposed to psychological, ethics." And, in Mr. Balfour's words, "all that a moralist can do with regard to ethical first principles is not to prove them or deduce them, but to render them explicit if they are implicit, clear if they are obscure." That there is a common element in these as in all other classes of judgments, whether of value or of fact; or, in other words, that experience is rational,—is the common assumption of science and philosophy alike.

This leads to the second misunderstanding, namely, that it is possible, in the normative sciences, to transcend the sphere of common-sense or ordinary judgment, and to discover, beyond that sphere, an absolute norm or standard with which we can then compare, and, according to the result of our comparison, establish or invalidate the findings of common-sense. That is, of course, impossible, and contradictory of the idea of science in general, if not also of philosophy. All science is, it is true, a criticism of common-sense; but it is an immanent criticism, a self-criticism. There is no transcending common-sense, no leaving it behind. If common-sense were not already rational—in a measure actually so, and in posse