Chapter I

THE NATURE OF ETHICS

§1. A Provisional Definition

In ordinary conversation we often hear such statements as: 'He ought not to have done this', 'It is a good
thing to help one's neighbours', 'He is a thoroughly good man', 'His character is bad', 'He was only doing
his duty', or 'It is always right to speak the truth.' When such statements are made they are frequently
contradicted by someone hearing them, and this by itself suggests that they are not as simple as at first
sight they appear to be. If a friend disagrees with my statement that Smith is a thoroughly good man, he
may do so for one of two reasons. (a) He may know facts about Smith's behaviour which are unknown to
me; and if he tells me these facts and convinces me that they are true, I shall then be ready to admit
that Smith is in some respects not a good man. (b) It may be the case, however, that my friend and I
both know the same facts about Smith, and yet I continue to hold that Smith is thoroughly good, while
my friend considers him to be bad. Now we are using the words 'good' and 'bad' with different
meanings, and, until we come to some agree- ment as to their meanings, we are not likely to agree in
our opinion of Smith. This is just the kind of question with which ethics deals-what is the true meaning
of such words as 'good' and 'right" and 'ought' which are used so commonly in everyday conversation.
When we come to an agreement as to the meaning of such words, other questions will arise. We may
ask whether it is possible for us to know whether Smith is good or bad; we may ask on what grounds
Smith should give up those activities which we have agreed to call bad, and should engage in those
which we have agreed to call good. All these and many other similar questions are within the scope of
ethics.

2.

We may define ethics as the normative science of the con- duct of human beings living in societies-a
science which judges this conduct to be right or wrong, to be good or bad, or in some similar way. This
definition says, first of all, that ethics is a science, and a science may be defined as a systematic and
more or less complete body of knowledge about a par- ticular set of related events or objects. In this
account of science, the important word is systematic; scientific knowledge differs from the ordinary,
haphazard knowledge of unedu- cated people in being arranged in a definite coherent system. A science
also aims at providing as complete a knowledge of its subject-matter as it can, although, in the present
state of knowledge, no science is perfect in this respect. At the same time, the scientist may leave out
details that he knows, in order to give a simpler and clearer presentation of the im- portant connexions
of the facts which he studies. It is generally agreed that a piece of knowledge cannot be re- garded as
'scientific' until it is accepted by those who are earned in the particular science concerned: in medicine,
for example, the new cures which are so convincingly advertised cannot be regarded as scientific until
they have been recog- nized as effective by capable doctors. Finally, the sphere of a science is limited to
one set of facts or objects; no science deals with all the facts known about the universe; to deal with the
universe as a whole is the work of metaphysics or philosophy, which is not a science. Each science has its
own particular sphere; botany deals with plants, psychology with minds, and ethics with certain
judgements that we make about human conduct.
The sciences which are studied in the laboratories of our universities are descriptive or positive sciences.
Positive sciences describe objects or phenomena as we observe them with our eyes and other sense-
organs, or in the case of mental processes like desiring and willing as we observe them by introspection
or looking inside our minds. (Phenomenon' is just the technical term for anything that can be observed
in this way.) There is in a positive science no question of judg- ing its objects in any way. If the botanist
judges a certain plant to be good or bad, or even to be beautiful or ugly, he is no longer doing the work
of a botanist, whose business it is

.3

to describe what he observes without judging either its reality or its value. The psychologist describes
the mental processes like intention and willing which lead, to human conduct, but, as psychologist, he
has no concern with the goodness or badness of that conduct. There is a group of sciences, however,
which do not deal directly with observed facts but which deal, as systematically and completely as is
possible, with the standards or rules or norms or criteria by which we judge certain objects, and these
sciences are called normative sciences. Aesthetics, for example, deals systematic- ally with the standards
by which we judge objects of percep- tion, commonly sights and sounds, to be beautiful or ugly. Logic
deals with the standards by which we judge statements to be true or false, and ethics deals with the
standards by which we judge human actions to be right or wrong. The normative sciences differ from
the positive sciences in one more way; they do not merely describe the standards by which we judge;
they are also concerned with the validity or truth of these standards. In ethics for example it is not
enough to describe the rules by which men have tested their conduct, such as the Ten Commandments
of the Hebrews; we also ask in ethics why these rules are valid or on what grounds we ought to observe
them.

Ethics has been defined as the normative science of conduct, and conduct is a collective name for
voluntary actions. In common speech we judge many things other than human actions to be good or
bad; we speak for example of good wine and bad luck. The words 'good' and 'bad' are used am-
biguously in ordinary speech. A single science may be required to deal with them in all their various
meanings and to distinguish these meanings from one another, and such a science is sometimes called
axiology or the science of values. We shall see later that one ethical theory holds that what we mean by
calling an action right or good is that it leads to a result which is good in one of the various senses of
good, and,, if this theory be accepted, a study of ethics would require to be completed by a study of
axiology. At the outset, however, it will keep things more clear if we confine ethics to the study of
human conduct and leave to axiology the study of other things that can be called good or bad. Conduct
does not
.4

include those human activities like the circulation of the blood

over which most normal people have no control, but it in- cludes all voluntary actions. A voluntary
action is an action that a man could have done differently if he had so chosen. Voluntary actions include
all willed or volitional actions in which there is a conscious process of willing like the action of a student
matriculating in a university. Voluntary actions also include certain actions, where there may be no
conscious process of willing at all, provided that the doer could have prevented or changed the action by
choosing to do so. A habitual action like a child's sucking of his thumb, or even a reflex action like
blinking in a strong light, may be voluntary although the doer of these actions may not be thinking about
them at all. The doer, by attending to them and choosing, could have done these actions differently or
refrained from doing them at all, and so they must be regarded as voluntary. Sometimes people try to
excuse their wrong actions by saying that these actions were not deliberately willed or chosen, as when
a man continues a dishonest business practice of his predecessor without thinking about it. The question
for ethics is not whether such an action was deliberately willed, but whether the doer could have
prevented it by taking thought about it. If he could have prevented it, the action can cer- tainly be
judged to be a right or a wrong action, although we may admit that its degree of rightness or wrongness
may be affected by its deliberateness. Conduct may include inward activities like motives and desires as
well as outward activities like speech and movements of the doer's limbs, and so these also will fall
within the sphere of ethics. We so commonly think of these as causing outward bodily movements that
we forget that they too are activities and liable to be judged good or bad even apart from the outward
movements they produce.

Our provisional definition has limited the conduct with which we deal in ethics in two ways. We deal
with human actions and not with the actions of the lower animals. It may be admitted that there is
something like human goodness about a dog's loyalty to its master, but psychologists are so far from
agreeing as to whether any of the actions of the lower animals are voluntary in the sense given to this
word in the

There are several terms commonly used in judging human actions by ethical standards. We say that an
action is 'good' or 'bad', 'right' or 'wrong', 'moral' or 'immoral'. We say that we ought' to do an action,
that we 'should' do it or that it is our 'duty' to do it; and of another kind of action we say that we ought
not' to do it, we 'should not' do it, or it is our 'duty' not to do it. Of these terms 'good' and 'bad' are
probably the most common, but they are also the most troublesome. In the first place, they are used
ambiguously in common speech; not only are 'good' works done by the pious, but the trouble-maker
enjoys a 'good' fight, and the successful burglar makes a 'good' haul from the safe which he has robbed.
In fact, the word 'good' as commonly used merely indicates an attitude of mind in favour of the object or
event to which the term good is applied, and nothing more, so that almost anything may be termed
good if anyone finds himself in favour of its existence even to a very limited degree. The ordinary man
seems to distinguish such a loose sense of good from a more definitely moral sense, but even about the
moral sense there is a great deal of ambiguity. We certainly think of morally good conduct not merely as
that towards which men feel a favourable attitude; it is in some sense conduct worthy of arousing such a
favourable attitude or conduct that ought to arouse such an attitude. This is some- times expressed by
saying that when we call conduct 'good' we are approaching it from the standpoint of value, but surely
'value' has just the same meaning as 'goodness' in the widest axiological use of that term. It is
convenient in ethics to use the words 'good' or 'bad' of an action, when we are thinking of the action as
leading to consequences, which are 'good' or 'bad' in some sense of these very ambiguous terms, for
example, consequences which satisfy our desires, but this limitation is hardly in accord with common
use. The whole range of the meanings of 'good' will have to be considered when we come to those
ethical theories which regard the 'goodness' or 'rightness' of an action as depending upon its power of
producing 'good' results.

The words 'right' and 'wrong' have no such reference to consequences. They are used of actions that are
in some way 'fitting' to their circumstances, as when we say that a

The Nature of Ethics

last paragraph, that it would be unwise to add to our compli- cations by including animal activities within
the limits of our subject. A more arbitrary limitation is that of confining ethics to the study of the
conduct of human beings living in societies. Some moralists would indeed go further and hold that the
standards of ethics only apply to the relations of men with one another; the conduct studied in ethics is
not only conduct done in a society, but conduct that affects some other member or members of that
society. It is worth while in- cluding a reference to society in our definition to remind ourselves that, if it
were not for his social background, a human being would not be a real human being capable of right and
wrong actions. Aristotle expressed this by saying, 'He who is unable to live in society, or who has no
need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god." Robinson Crusoe's conduct in
the solitude of his desert island may be still judged good or bad, but, according to this view, these terms
would obtain their meaning from the social en- vironment in which Crusoe had lived before he found
him- self in an uninhabited island, and to which there was always a hope that he might return. It may be
for some purposes convenient to include in a single normative science the standards by which we judge
all human activities including those that appear to have no effects on other people or re- lations with
them, and it is difficult to think of another name than ethics for such a science. Yet common usage
would certainly make a social activity like speaking the truth more directly the concern of ethics than a
purely private activity with no marked social effects like stamp-collecting or a religious activity like
fasting. Of course such activities do have indirect social effects; the man who is fasting cannot share his
food with a visitor, and so far his action would be judged by the standards of ethics. This limitation is
one that may have to be given up on a fuller study of ethics, but, in the beginning we shall find it an
advantage to emphasize the social background of the moral life, and to confine the activities judged in
ethics to those done with the normal human background of social institutions and social relation- ships.
.6

There are several terms commonly used in judging human actions by ethical standards. We say that an
action is 'good' or 'bad', 'right' or 'wrong', 'moral' or 'immoral'. We say that we ought' to do an action,
that we 'should' do it or that it is our 'duty' to do it; and of another kind of action we say that we ought
not' to do it, we 'should not' do it, or it is our 'duty' not to do it. Of these terms 'good' and 'bad' are
probably the most common, but they are also the most troublesome. In the first place, they are used
ambiguously in common speech; not only are 'good' works done by the pious, but the trouble-maker
enjoys a 'good' fight, and the successful burglar makes a 'good' haul from the safe which he has robbed.
In fact, the word 'good' as commonly used merely indicates an attitude of mind in favour of the object or
event to which the term good is applied, and nothing more, so that almost anything may be termed
good if anyone finds himself in favour of its existence even to a very limited degree. The ordinary man
seems to distinguish such a loose sense of good from a more definitely moral sense, but even about the
moral sense there is a great deal of ambiguity. We certainly think of morally good conduct not merely as
that towards which men feel a favourable attitude; it is in some sense conduct worthy of arousing such a
favourable attitude or conduct that ought to arouse such an attitude. This is some- times expressed by
saying that when we call conduct 'good' we are approaching it from the standpoint of value, but surely
'value' has just the same meaning as 'goodness' in the widest axiological use of that term. It is
convenient in ethics to use the words 'good' or 'bad' of an action, when we are thinking of the action as
leading to consequences, which are 'good' or 'bad' in some sense of these very ambiguous terms, for
example, consequences which satisfy our desires, but this limitation is hardly in accord with common
use. The whole range of the meanings of 'good' will have to be considered when we come to those
ethical theories which regard the 'goodness' or 'rightness' of an action as depending upon its power of
producing 'good' results.

The words 'right' and 'wrong' have no such reference to consequences. They are used of actions that are
in some way 'fitting' to their circumstances, as when we say that a

.7

person said or did the right thing in an interview. The fittingness of a right action often appears to
consist in its conformity to some rule, and the view that the moral life is a matter of obeying rules is a
very common one. We think of an action as before a judge, and when he has passed his judgement, it is
called right. There are however other uses of 'right' than the moral one; we use it commonly in aesthetic
judgements, such as "This is the right kind of hat to go with this dress', or 'This word is just right in this
line of the poem'. In this aesthetic use, 'right' also suggests fittingness to cir- cumstances, but here this
fittingness is an aesthetic one.

The word 'right' sometimes suggests that the action referred to is in some way obligatory; the doer or
other people feel that he ought to do it. This is not always the case; it is right for a man to feel regret
when his mother-in-law leaves his house, but no one could say that he ought to do so, if his feelings are
not under his control. This sense of obligatori- ness is, however, definitely implied in the phrases 'He
ought to do this', or 'It is his duty to do this', and it is one factor which influences the doer in doing or
not doing the action. Such a judgement of ought-ness or duty is very different from the judgement of
goodness. We might all agree to say that it is good to eat ice-cream on a very hot day, but no one would
seriously say that we ought to eat ice-cream, or that it is our duty to eat ice-cream on a hot day, because
we do not feel any obligation to do so, unless we wish. It may be suggested that ewhat distinguishes an
action which we ought to do from one that is merely right, is that, when we ought to do an action, the
action is not only right but there are motives and in- clinations in the mind of the doer which would
hinder his doing it. We can say that the malaria patient ought to take his daily dose of quinine, because
the unpleasant taste of the medicine makes him strongly disinclined to do so.

It is possible for more than one action to be right at the same time. It may be equally right for me to
drink coffee or to drink tea at breakfast; it may be equally right for me to study economics or to study
history in a university course. In such cases we cannot say that I ought to drink coffee or that it is my
duty to drink tea or that I ought to study economics, or that it is my duty to study history. These phrases
imply that there

.8

is one and only one action which is right for me at the moment. If it is my duty now to study history,
then no other action would be right at this moment, so that to study economics would be wrong for me.
Of course, in a rather more elaborate way of speaking, I may be able to say that it is my duty to study
either history or economics, but this would again imply that to study mathematics, at least on this
particular occasion, would be wrong. The words 'ought' and 'duty' certainly apply only to right actions,
but they suggest, if not imply, certain other things about these right actions: (a) that they are obligatory
on a particular individual, (b) that there are tendencies in the mind of the doer making him disinclined to
do them, and (c) that one, and only one, action is right at a particular moment.

While these appear to be the distinctions in common speech in the use of ethical terms, it is to be
remembered that there may be a difference of emphasis or even meaning in the use of such terms by
different persons. Some, like Kant, may feel a sense of awe in the presence of the statement that a
certain action is a man's duty, or that he ought to do it, but the moral judgement may arouse no such
feeling in another man. The business of the student of ethics is to try to reach meanings which will be
generally accepted by educated people, and also to limit these meanings so that the terms will be free
from ambiguity and our use of them free from inconsistency. Yet we are not likely to attain this in ethics,
for ethical terms, un- like the technical terms of the sciences, are words in coinmon use on men's lips,
and are liable to constant change in emphasis and meaning.

§2. Moral Sciences

An attempt has been made in the last section to give a definition of ethics, and to explain the various
words used in that definition. In the case of a subject like ethics, about the subject-matter of which most
people have some ideas, it is even more helpful to distinguish ethics from the other sciences dealing
with human conduct with which it may be confused. There are certain sciences in which we describe
human conduct without expressing any opinion about its value or making any judgement about it. At
present, the most

person said or did the right thing in an interview. The fittingness of a right action often appears to
consist in its conformity to some rule, and the view that the moral life is a matter of obeying rules is a
very common one. We think of an action as before a judge, and when he has passed his judgement, it is
called right. There are however other uses of 'right' than the moral one; we use it commonly in aesthetic
judgements, such as "This is the right kind of hat to go with this dress', or 'This word is just right in this
line of the poem'. In this aesthetic use, 'right' also suggests fittingness to cir- cumstances, but here this
fittingness is an aesthetic one.

The word 'right' sometimes suggests that the action referred to is in some way obligatory; the doer or
other people feel that he ought to do it. This is not always the case; it is right for a man to feel regret
when his mother-in-law leaves his house, but no one could say that he ought to do so, if his feelings are
not under his control. This sense of obligatori- ness is, however, definitely implied in the phrases 'He
ought to do this', or 'It is his duty to do this', and it is one factor which influences the doer in doing or
not doing the action. Such a judgement of ought-ness or duty is very different from the judgement of
goodness. We might all agree to say that it is good to eat ice-cream on a very hot day, but no one would
seriously say that we ought to eat ice-cream, or that it is our duty to eat ice-cream on a hot day, because
we do not feel any obligation to do so, unless we wish. It may be suggested that ewhat distinguishes an
action which we ought to do from one that is merely right, is that, when we ought to do an action, the
action is not only right but there are motives and in- clinations in the mind of the doer which would
hinder his doing it. We can say that the malaria patient ought to take his daily dose of quinine, because
the unpleasant taste of the medicine makes him strongly disinclined to do so.

It is possible for more than one action to be right at the same time. It may be equally right for me to
drink coffee or to drink tea at breakfast; it may be equally right for me to study economics or to study
history in a university course. In such cases we cannot say that I ought to drink coffee or that it is my
duty to drink tea or that I ought to study economics, or that it is my duty to study history. These phrases
imply that there

.9

scientific description of human conduct is probably that given by psychology, and one school of modern
psychology, the behaviourist school, holds that the sole subject-matter of a really scientific psychology is
conduct or behaviour. Most psychologists, however, hold the principal part of their field to be not so
much the resulting conduct as the inward pro- cesses, like intention and decision, which lead to outward
conduct. One branch of psychology, now called social psychology, describes among other things conduct
in its social relations, and this is the kind of conduct with which ethics is chiefly concerned. Human
conduct is also described in sociology, which may be defined as the science of human society, and while
the study of individual conduct has now become the sphere of social psychology rather than sociology,
sociology still has for its subject-matter the social institutions and customs which form the background
of all human conduct and especially the conduct directed towards other human beings which is the
special concern of ethics. Anthropology in its widest sense as the science of man includes human
conduct in its sphere, and a great deal of the work of anthrop- ologists has been the description of the
conduct and customs of primitive peoples. Indeed, the anthropologist has given so much attention to
primitive peoples that we are apt to forget that anthropology deals properly with all mankind and not
merely with savage peoples. And anthropology deals with more than conduct; it deals with the physical
and mental characteristics of people which only affect their conduct in- directly. These three sciences,
psychology, sociology and anthropology, all provide us with facts about human conduct; and a general
knowledge of such facts is a necessary pre- liminary to making true judgements about human conduct.
Even in such a brief survey of ethics as that contained in this book, it will be necessary to make a
restatement of certain psychological and sociological facts in the second, third and fourth chapters. Yet
just because these sciences are positive sciences which avoid judgements of value of any kind, we are
not very likely to confuse them with ethics.

There is, however, one branch of positive science which is nearer to ethics than the rest. The sociologist
or the anthrop- ologist may not only describe human conduct and its

10

conditions; he may go on to describe the opinions that men have held in different ages and in different
places about their own conduct and that of others, what kind of actions they have commonly regarded
as good and right, and what kind of actions they have regarded as bad and wrong. This is what the
sociologist Westermarck has done in his book The History of Human Marriage; he has not only described
marriage customs and rites, but has told what people in different countries and different periods of
history have thought right or have thought wrong in connection with marriage. Now, here the
sociologist is still describing facts; he is not judging or evaluating them in any way. In this science a
sociologist may state that polygamy under certain conditions is considered right by Mohammadans but
is considered wrong by Christians, but he has no right to go on to say that, in this matter, the judgement
of Christians is true while that of Mohammadans is false or vice versa. To do so would be to leave the
work of a positive science and to take up the work of ethics. We shall see in a later section on the
methods of ethics that ethics must take into account the opinions of ordinary men on ethical matters,
and, to this extent, ethics is dependent on this descriptive science, which we may label the 'positive
science of morals'. At the present day the word 'morals' is used with a variety of meanings, for the
science of ethics itself, for actions regarded as good and right, and for the rules according to which such
actions are done. It was originally derived from the Latin word 'mores', meaning customs, and so may be
appropriately used for men's customary ways of judging human conduct, and that is what we are
describing in this positive science.
The word 'ethics', although it is indirectly derived from a Greek word also meaning 'custom', has, by long
technical usage, been limited to the normative science, the science which tells not what men actually do
and actually think it right to do, but what men ought to do and what they ought to think it right to do. In
the normative science of ethics, we study the standards by which we judge actions to be right and
wrong, good and bad, or in the other ways mentioned in the first section of this chapter. From another
point of view we ask what is the real meaning of these terms, right and wrong, good and bad, and the
rest; once again we are not

The Nature of Ethics

II

asking what people think they mean when they use them; we are asking their true meaning or the only
meaning in which they can be used correctly. Such an investigation will necessarily result in the
discovery of standards or norms or criteria by which right actions can be distinguished from wrong
actions or even better actions from good actions. The discovery and the establishment of such standards
are the primary tasks of the normative science of ethics.

The word 'establishment' suggests that we cannot stop in ethics with merely stating the meaning or
logical connotation of such terms as 'good' and 'right' and 'ought'. Even if a person knew fully the
characteristics of action implied by these terms, he might still go on to ask: 'Why ought I to do what is
right?' or 'Why ought I to avoid what is bad?' It may be the case that an adequate definition of the terms
'right' and 'ought' and 'bad' would supply the answers, but if that be the case, the definition itself often
implies a certain view of the universe as a whole and of man's place in it. It is because of man's place in
the universe that we can say that certain actions are right, or that he ought to do them. Even a
philosopher who maintains that the meaning of ethical terms is not affected by the relations of our
actions to anything else is still holding a certain metaphysical view of the universe, a view that he will
need to defend in order to demonstrate that his ethical statement about goodness not being affected by
relations is valid. Such a passage from science to philosophy has already been suggested when it was
said that the norma- tive sciences 'do not merely describe the standards by which we judge; they are
also concerned with the validity or truth of these standards'. This surely means the place of these
standards in the whole scheme of things. It is, for example, a question for philosophy or metaphysics to
decide whether our judgements of right and wrong are merely customary opinions that are created by
our human minds with no fixed objective basis, or whether they state truths about the ultimate con-
stitution of the universe. We may somewhat arbitrarily limit the word 'ethics' to the science describing
the standards, but the student of ethics will soon find that the description will develop into an
investigation of the validity of the stan- dards, and we may call this investigation 'moral philosophy',
12

An Introduction to Ethics

the name by which ethics was most commonly denoted until recently in the older British universities.
There can be no sharp division between ethics and moral philosophy; a more profound study of the
normative science inevitably raises philosophical questions.

How far the standards of ethics can be used in ordinary practice to distinguish a right action from a
wrong action will depend largely on the nature of these standards, but it has been a matter of common
experience that there are cases where it is very difficult even for the man experienced in making moral
judgements to tell which course of action is right. One of the most familiar examples is whether a doctor
is right in answering a patient's question with a false answer, when he knows or thinks it extremely likely
that a true answer will aggravate the patient's illness or even cause his death. The science of applying
the standards of ethics to particular kinds of cases is properly called 'casuistry', and, however this
science may have been misused in the past, the application of ethical standards to particular kinds of
cases is in itself a perfectly legitimate and reasonable sphere for a science. The difficulties and dangers
of this science of casuistry will concern us later. In the meanwhile we must note that we are still dealing
with knowledge and not practice, with a science and not with an art. The fact that the truth as to what
action is right in a particular situation does give valuable guidance to a person in that situation as to
what he ought to do is not the direct concern of the casuist. His business is to reach true knowledge, not
to alter practice. In this sense it is possible to admit with Dr. G. E. Moore1 that casuistry is one of the
goals of ethical investigation and yet to deny that the aim of ethics is to affect or improve our practice. It
might be better to call casuistry applied ethics than to call it practical ethics, for knowledge applied in
particular circumstances is still the primary aim.

There is, however, a body of knowledge collected with the special aim of guiding people in the practice
of right conduct or the art of living the good life. We call such guidance 'moralizing', and moralizing is by
no means confined to the student of ethics, or even to the moral philosopher. The 1 G. E. Moore:
Principia Ethica, Ch. I, Siv.

The Nature of Ethics

13

moralizer has more often drawn his material from long practical experience of life than from text-books
of ethics or moral philosophy; he is the sage or wise man', typically elderly in years, often without book-
learning but rich in human experience. Such was the author of the book of Proverbs in the Old
Testament, or of the Analects of Con- fucius. Sometimes it is claimed that his moral maxims are due to
direct supernatural inspiration; sometimes the man himself is thought to have a 'gift', an unusual inborn
insight into such matters. The knowledge of ethics does have some value for the moralizer; it gives him
knowledge of the nature of moral principles which can be applied in the particular cases in which he
gives counsel, and a width of outlook which may help him to avoid bias and prejudice. It may indeed be
the duty of the student of ethics to use his knowledge of ethical principles to engage in the 'time-
honoured task of moralists at present very largely neglected, to preach and to edify, to inculcate new
duties and devotions, or to make men profoundly conscious of old ones'.1 Yet the student of ethics may
admit that he lacks the more necessary qualifications for the task of moralizer such as the necessary gift
of insight or the long experience of the ways of men with one another. The preacher and the
educationist have certainly much to learn from ethics, but theirs is a different subject; we may call it
practical ethics or moralizing, and it is a subject the aim of which is to affect and improve practical
conduct.

There still remains to be considered the practice of doing right actions or what we may call the art of
living the good life. Mackenzie thought that it was not correct to speak of conduct as an art, but there
are actually resemblances between good conduct and such fine arts as painting or music to which the
phrase 'the art of conduct' draws attention.

(a) We learn to do what is right, as the artist learns to paint, not so much by a study of theory, as by long
and painstaking practice. We may admit that the understanding of ethical principles is a help in the
practice of goodness just as an under- standing of the nature of beauty may be a help to the painter 1 J.
N. Findlay: Morality by Convention (Mind. N.S., Vol. LIII, p. 169).

2 J. S. Mackenzie: Manual of Ethics, Ch. 1, iv.

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An Introduction to Ethics

in his art. At the same time the study of the great masters and the deliberate copying of their methods
are of greater use than theoretic study in both good living and painting. And in both the chief secret of
success appears to be practice.

(b) Good conduct and the arts both directly cause changes in the world outside of us. We make things
around us different by doing good deeds just as the artist makes his canvas different by painting a
picture on it. The knowledge of science and philosophy, of which ethics is one example, has no such
direct effect on the world outside. Such know- ledge does affect the mind of the knower and in so doing
indirectly affects his outside activities, but conduct and the fine arts are themselves activities directly
changing the ob- jective material world. Their aim is action and not knowledge.

(c) Good conduct resembles the fine arts in either being or producing something which has in itself
beauty or 'worth- whileness' comparable to the beauty of a work of art. A noble deed arouses in us
something of the same type of admiration as that caused by a beautiful picture or a 'noble poem'. Sir
Philip Sidney's gift of water to a dying comrade is a commonly cited example of this type of action.

There are, however, certain marked differences between good conduct and the fine arts, and Mackenzie
was drawing attention to these when he denied that good conduct can be properly called an art.

(a) An art is concerned with one particular type of activity of a person, whereas good conduct is
concerned with all a person's activities. The activity of the painter may be judged not only by the
standards of art but by ethical standards; his picture though admittedly beautiful may be evil in its
influence. The clever burglary may satisfy the standards of the burglar's craft but is none the less morally

wrong.

(b) The artist may practise his art at some times and com- pletely neglect it at other times, but the good
man must practise goodness at all times. There can be no holidays in the moral life. Other arts share to
some extent in this need of practice; a musician's neglect of practice will be a great

The Nature of Ethic

15

hindrance in his art, but even then he does not need to keep at his practising all his waking life. The
really good man, however, must be good waking, sleeping or eating without any interlude.

(c) Good intentions are generally thought to have no relevance in the arts. We judge an artist not by
what he intends to produce, but by what he actually produces, but in the sphere of morality we judge a
man to be good if we believe that his intentions would have normally resulted in good actions, even
although in actual cases circumstances have made the result different from the normal. We still give the
credit of goodness to a man who has tried to save a child from drowning, although he has actually failed
to rescue the child. We must not however exaggerate this difference between good conduct and the
arts. A man and his intentions will stop being regarded as good if they repeatedly produce bad results or
no results at all, and the supposedly good man whose actions always turn out badly will be treated with
the same contempt as the artist who regards himself as great but never produces any pictures. At the
same time there is no doubt that in judging in ethics we do take more account of the motives and
intentions of the doer of the action than we do in judging works of art.

(d) An artist is a man who can produce a work of art; a good man is a man who not only can but does do
good actions. At the same time, as we have already suggested, the artist who does not practise his art
will soon lose the skill that makes him worthy to be called an artist. On the other hand many of the good
man's capacities for goodness must remain un- displayed until a suitable opportunity for displaying them
arises. The winner of the Victoria Cross may have been as brave a man in the days of peace, but only the
dangers of a particular situation in war may give him the opportunity of displaying in action his own
particular type of goodness. Here again the difference is one of degree rather than of kind. In both artist
and good man capacities must be ready to show themselves in action when the opportunity arises.

Our conclusion is that, whether we decide to call the living of a good life an art or not, it is certain that to
live rightly has some resemblances to the arts and some differences from them.
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An Introduction to Ethics

As long as we remember the differences there seems no reason why we should not refer to the art of
good living.

There are then six moral disciplines (to use a term which may include science, philosophy and art): (1) a
positive science of morals, describing men's moral standards in different countries and ages; (2) the
normative science of ethics, stating valid moral standards; (3) moral philosophy examining the validity of
these standards by determining their place in the universe as a whole; (4) casuistry or applied ethics
applying valid standards to particular concrete cases; (5) moralizing, or practical ethics, a discipline
having as its definite aim the improvement of conduct; and (6) the art or practice of living a good life. In
this book we are concerned primarily with the normative science of ethics, but we shall almost certainly
in our study raise questions which need to be answered by moral philosophy and we shall illustrate our
ethical principles by concrete applications of the kind described in casuistry. We shall refer to the
student of ethics as a moralist, although this word is often used for the moralizer as well.

§3. The Data and Methods of Ethics

The English philosopher, Locke, said in a famous passage: 'But God has not been so sparing to men to
make them barely two-legged creatures and left it to Aristotle to make them rational.... He has given
them a mind that can reason with- out being instructed in methods of syllogizing." A similar

remark might be made about man's powers of distinguishing right and wrong; God has not left it to the
professors of ethics to make men discover the difference. It is not the business of the moralist to create
moral standards out of nothing; he lives himself in a social environment where certain moral standards,
however vaguely expressed and imperfect they may be, are accepted and these standards serve as his
data or material. The value of the work of students of the positive science of morals, like Westermarck,
is that they describe the standards that do exist now or have existed in the past accur- ately and
systematically, and not with the inaccuracies and the bias that have been the common characteristics of
travellers' tales. There certainly appear to be inconsistencies 1 Locke: Concerning Human
Understanding, Book IV, Ch. 17.

The Nature of Ethics

17

and contradictions in these established moral standards, although modern sociologists are of the
opinion that these have been exaggerated by those who have failed to under- stand or describe them
properly. It is the first business of the student of ethics to reveal these inconsistencies between
generally accepted standards and to show how these can be removed without making more than
necessary alterations in the accepted standards. The best way of doing this is to try to discover if any
more general principles underlie these standards, and this is the next step in his method. He will do this
very much in the way that the physical scientist dis- covers a law. His examination and classification of
commonly accepted moral rules will suggest to his mind some hypothesis, for example, the hypothesis
of the hedonists that the actions commanded by moral rules are all actions which cause pleasure. He will
see whether this hypothesis holds generally, and he will apply it in particular cases with as varied
circumstances as possible. If he finds a large number of cases, where men have regarded actions as good
which clearly do not cause pleasure, he will modify or reject his hypothesis. If it appears likely to meet all
cases when they are sufficiently understood, then he will accept the hypothesis.

So far, however, the moralist is still engaged in the task of the descriptive scientist, and his ethics
remains a natural science. His aim is not to discover moral principles which, as a matter of fact, are
accepted by all men; his aim is rather to discover moral principles which all men ought to accept,
whether they actually do so or not. His task is the critical one of seeing which moral principles can
survive examination. One step in that examination is that which we have already mentioned; the
moralist compares existing moral standards to see if the inconsistencies between them can be removed
by wider principles. There are, however, inconsistencies which cannot be removed; a great many people
hold for example that monogamy is always and universally right, and that no circumstances whatever
can make polygamy right. The moralist has then to do something for which natural science provides no
method; he has to show either that monogamy is always right or that polygamy is sometimes right. The

18

An Introduction to Ethics

fact that a majority of mankind regard monogamy as always right, or the fact that this view fits in better
with the other moral opinions of most men may suggest its correctness, but they certainly do not prove
its correctness.

tuition.

It looks as if the moralist were left to decide the question by his own direct insight or intuition, and it is
certainly the case that direct or intuitive judgement plays a far larger part in the normative sciences, and
especially in ethics, than it does in the physical descriptive sciences. A thinker may, for example, see that
monogamy is always right, and go on to maintain that he will never accept any argument which will
admit of polygamy being right even in a single case. Or he may find it self-evident that by calling an
action good we mean nothing else than that the action causes pleasure. We all of us, ordinary men and
moralists alike, have such intuitions, and, as long as we have them, we must find a place for them in our
ethical system. What the holder of an intuition often forgets is that there is nothing infallible about such
an in- When two intuitions contradict one another, one is necessarily false, and this sometimes does
happen. If by experience or ethical theory it is shown that an intuition leads to self-contradictory or
absurd consequences, then it must be given up. This is the form taken by a good deal of debate on
ethical matters. So long as the hedonist, for example, is ready to accept the consequences of his theory
there is no refuting his theory. It is when his opponent can show him that hedonism leads to some
consequence that the hedonist is not prepared to accept that the theory is shown to be false. A wider
experience of life and a deeper understanding of the principles of ethics are likely to change a man's
intuitions. Indeed, these are the only reasons why the intuitions of the moralist can deserve more
respect than those of the ordinary man. The moralist himself will be the first to say that the intuitions of
the common man, particularly if they are widely held, must be given due consideration, for the common
man too has had his experience of life and has engaged in some reflection on moral matters, and so his
intuitions are not to be despised. What seems however to be self-evident both to the common man and
the moralist is not always true. We find this to be the case in other spheres than that of ethics;

The Nature of Ethics

19

to the ordinary man in the seventeenth century the im- possibility of sending a message from England to
America within five minutes was self-evident, but the modern inven- tions of telegraph and radio have
changed all that. It is the special business of ethics to test our intuitions, both by their own consistency
among themselves and by a critical com- parison of our own intuitions with those of others, and especi-
ally with the intuitions which have found expression in widely accepted moral codes. Yet, even after
such testing, the final judgements still appear to be intuitive; in the light of all our knowledge and
experience we see that a certain course of action is right, or that a certain standard is universally valid.
We begin our study of ethics with intuitions that are vague, prejudiced and inconsistent; we should end
our study with intuitions that have established themselves by their coherence with one another, their
relative alignment with the most generally accepted moral codes and the continued self-evidence with
which they come to our minds after a wide and varied experience of life. Professor G. C. Field has
pointed out that we do not begin a study of ethics with the more or less exact definitions with which we
begin a study of geometry.1 Just as we begin a study of zoology with a vague notion of what a spider is
like and end with an accurate scientific description of each species of spider, so we begin ethics with
vague in- tuitions of what is right and what is wrong, and should attain to clear insights into objective
standards of rightness and wrongness.

It may be suggested that the analysis, which is used in the physical sciences, and which many moralists
try to use in discovering the meanings of ethical terms, is not an appro- priate method for ethical study
at all. The goodness of a noble action, like the beauty of a great picture, depends so much on the action
as a whole, that the picking out by analysis of qualities which are good simply ignores the real nature of
the action's moral goodness. It may be argued in reply that such analysis leads in ethics as in other
sciences to a fuller understanding, and that the essential thing is only that our final moral judgement
should be made on the whole action and not on its analysed elements. Such a final judgement 1 The
Place of Definition in Ethics. Proc. Arist. Soc., 1931-32, p. 81.

20
An Introduction to Ethics

must be intuitive, but it is an intuition modified by analysis and comparison.

When we have arrived at a consistent system of moral principles that appear to be self-evident, and
most moralists would admit that they are not fully satisfied with their own systems, we may proceed in
two directions. We may go in the direction of moral philosophy and show the validity of our principles
by demonstrating their place in the nature of reality as a whole; or we may go in the direction of
casuistry and show how these principles will be applied in the particular circumstances and conditions of
our own lives.

§4. The Uses of Ethics

Ethics is primarily a part of the quest for truth and the motive for studying it is the desire for knowledge.
In this respect it is more akin to philosophical subjects than the natural sciences where the practical
applications are many and attractive. We naturally want to know the truth about things, and ethics aims
at finding out the truth about some- thing that is both interesting and important-the rightness and
wrongness of human conduct. There is no guarantee that the man who understands by means of ethical
study the difference between right and wrong will necessarily follow the right. A theatre audience is
always amused at the un- lettered man in a modern comedy who tries to save his scholarly brother from
choosing evil courses by reminding him that he won a university prize in moral philosophy! In spite of
the teaching of Socrates that knowledge is virtue, it is commonly recognized that a mere knowledge of
ethical principles is not sufficient to keep anyone in the paths of virtue. It has already been said that the
example of good men's lives and the training of practical experience are likely to be more effective
influer.ces in producing good conduct.

At the same time there is no reason to doubt that, if other influences are favourable, the knowledge of
ethics will give some help in the pursuit of goodness. It may do so by way of casuistry; the student of
ethics is more likely to be right in his application of moral rules to a particular case than the man who
has an equal knowledge of the circumstances of the case 1 Barrie : What Every Woman Knows. III.