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not to prove anything; or like the dogmatic theologian's dis- covery and use of analogies in nature to establish his doctrines of the supernatural. All this may perhaps for a time save the face of ethics as a "normative" science, although its unhappy, yet inevitable, association with the Mad Hatter or the analogy- of-religion-to-nature theologian must bring some immediate dis- comfiture; but the true evidence of history is just one of the questions of fact that have been raised in this paper, so that the case of our vigorous advocate of a " normative " ethics in history must await the further development of our present argument.
Without more ado, therefore, I am constrained to define ethics, not as the science of what ought to be, nor as a normative science in any way dealing with a life of conformity to what is ideal as opposed to the real or actual, nor even as the science of moral conduct; for these are all misleading definitions, the best of them too much hampered by certain traditional meanings and sentiments; but almost pragmatically as "science of practical life" 1 in the hope perhaps of deepening the ideas both of science and of what is truly practical or, more fully and with some change of emphasis, as the science which studies and inter- prets the conditions of action with a view to action. So defined, ethics is made, to the satisfaction of everybody I think, as much art as science. Also, at the height of its theoretical or scientific enthusiasm it may appeal to a complete account of nature, nature being is it not? only the totality of the conditions of man's activity; or more practically, at least in the opinion of most it may appeal to the distinctly anthropological sciences, such as psychology, sociology, and anthropology in the narrower sense; but whichever of these appeals it makes, the more theoretical or the more practical, it is plainly and properly depending on some- thing as sound and basal as reality for its determination of what ought to be. A demand, in short, for well-informed, nay for always better-informed, conduct, and a conviction that conduct is moral or ideal, not to say also effective or practical, only as it is consciously loyal to reality such is ethics now; and such in effect, if not always clearly in its own conceit, or unwittingly, if
1 Vide Fite, Introduction to the Study of Ethics, pp. 6 f.
