that he should have had such a devotion. The larger and more varied his moral experience, the better fitted is he to deal with moral phenomena, provided only he can hold his experience off at arm's length and survey it as an objective fact. In support of this view, the weighty authority of Aristotle may be urged. "Everybody," said he, "is competent to judge the subjects which he understands, and is a good judge of them. It follows that in particular subjects it is a person of special education and in general a person of universal education, who is a good judge. Hence the young are not proper students of political[1] science, as they have no experience of the actions of life which form the premisses and subjects of the reasonings. Also it may be added that from their tendency to follow their emotions they will not study the subject to any purpose or profit." But by youthfulness Aristotle means not shortness of days, but immaturity of experience and lack of perspective, for he goes on to explain: "It makes no difference whether a person is young in years or youthful in character; for the defect of which I speak is not one of time, but is due to the emotional character of his life and pursuits. Knowledge is as useless to such a person as it is to an intemperate person. But where the desires and actions of people are regulated by reason, the knowledge of these subjects will be extremely valuable." Aristotle thus looked at ethics as having merely a practical value. "Its end is not knowledge, but action." But while he thus overlooked the purely theoretical character of the science, he rightly emphasized the need of personal moral experience, and also the need of regarding the experience with the clear, impartial eye of reason, not through the glasses of passion which cast a glamour over life and pervert the judgment. It is judgment that we want: calm, sober, collected judgment on life.
IV. It is an extremely important matter that, if ethics be a science, its methods should be scientific. Historically, various methods have been pursued, each with its own assumptions.
- ↑ Aristotle considered ethics a branch of political science, or rather, as we should call it in these days, of sociology. Hence the pertinence of this quotation to the present purpose. Indeed, it was in its bearings upon ethics that the remark was made. Nic. Ethics, I, 1. (Welldon's tr., pp. 4 and 5.)
