If we look now for a final and perfectly cold-blooded statement of this moral skepticism, a statement that shall let us see once for all its meaning, its foundation, and its scope, the present author knows of no better expression of it than the one that is contained in the appendix to Mr. Arthur Balfour’s “Defense of Philosophic Doubt,”[1] under the title “The Idea of a Philosophy of Ethics.” Mr. Balfour has shown us by the book in question that he has a very useful office in philosophic discussion, and we can only thank him for having made positive advance in ethics easier, by his clear statement of the difficulties that in the past have barred the way.
“Scientific judgments and ethical judgments deal,” says Mr. Balfour, “with essentially different subject-matters.” Scientific propositions state “facts or events, real or hypothetical.” Ethical propositions do not “announce an event,” nor yet do they tell any “fact of the external or internal world.” Ethical writers too often consider the “psychology of the individual holding the moral law.” But this is no matter for ethics, but only for psychological science. In fact, “if a proposition announcing obligation require proof at all, one term of that proof must always be a proposition announcing obligation, which itself requires no proof.” “There is no artifice by which an ethical proposition can be evolved from a scientific or metaphysical proposition, or any combination of such.” “The origin of an ultimate ethical belief can never supply a reason for believing
- ↑ London, MacMillan & Company, 1879.
