for his business acumen—a thing admirable enough in itself; but he fails to note how inadequate an account it gives of the total fact.
I propose then to ask in what general form reason can be applied to the ethical life, as a source of principles to guide us in the search for our best good. A principle, we should note, is something more than a mere generalization, fact, or truth. Every principle rests indeed upon a foundation of fact; and it is necessary to emphasize this in order to repudiate again the notion that in reason we have an immediate intuition of absolute ends. Take any formula that has been proposed as a starting-point for ethics—the proposition that we ought to be reasonable, or that we ought to lead a unified life, or that we ought to work for the general good. Of each of these, as purely intellectual propositions, it is legitimate to ask the question, Why ought we? We reach no resting place till we get hold of something that is not a rational intuition, or a principle, but a fact. And since the fact can hardly be that we are always reasonable, or always unified, or that we always act for the general good, the ultimate thing we are left with is the fact of approval, as an empirical expression of human nature. Unless we found ourselves—for no one can tell why human nature is of this sort rather than another, or indeed why it is at all—so constituted that some things are pronounced good by us and others not so good, no ideal, or principle, or guiding insight would be possible. And this fact of approval, again, is only one aspect, in terms of feeling, of that larger fact of the human constitution which we accept on the strength of the established convergence of common sense and science. But to get anything we can call a principle, we have to go beyond this. A principle always implies as well a connection with human practice; it is a general truth which can be used to suggest to us what it is we ought to do. Accordingly, if we are to be sure what we are after in the search for ethical principles, it is well to translate the problem into these specific terms: Granting the existence of human nature and its wants, can we point out anything as in general necessary to the attainment of those ends which man will find himself permanently approving?
