agreed that Persia needed outside assistance. Part of Persia desired American aid, but it was not forthcoming. Part of Persia desired to pick their advisors from several nations, but could come to no agreement. Persia had to have money and advice, and part of Persia was very glad to accept both from the British. Likely it would have been better for Persia's self-respect if all her advisors could have been her own paid servants instead of receiving any aid directly from the British ministry. But Sir Percy Cox, now virtually elected as civil ruler in Mesopotamia, formed many staunch friends for England while acting minister to Persia during 1918 and 1919, and General Dickson, whom the writer knew as officer in charge of Local Resources in Bagdad, is now making a name for himself in Persia that will long be revered and loved.

All is not love, however. The northwestern province of Persia has seceded and has taken a name meaning "Free-Land." This is called by some a Bolshevist movement, but it must not be confused with Russian Soviet government. While there is similarity in method, there is apparently no affiliation between the two. The leader of northwestern Persia, whose name means "Little man, ," comes from the jungles surrounding the Persian shores of the Caspian Sea. He is of fiery disposition and a strong personal leader. He is about equally anti-Shah, anti-British, and anti-Russian.

Viewed from a distance, there are marvelous opportunities for engineering and agricultural development throughout Mesopotamia and Persia. One might write a book on the hydro-electric possibilities alone.

As regards oil, or hydro-electricity, or potential wool and cotton, or any of these material things in Mesopotamia and Persia, they are not new. Germany prospected for oil all through those territories just prior to 1914. Anyone was privileged to do so. But with the governments of the past, which might and did cancel

concessions just as the expensive pioneering was completed, development was not forthcoming. It is only since British occupation has suggested the guaranty of stability that serious attention has been attracted; in itself a flattering indication of the high regard paid by the world to British fairness in political control. There is a definition of civilization which submits that the degree of civilization in any community is in direct ratio to the opportunity for its population to find remunerative employment both physical and mental. Civilization will increase under that definition in the countries mentioned when the type of political justice which Britain stands for becomes the habit of the land; and only then. Viewed from a distance the Briton may seem a pretty shrewd propagandist and a vile exploiter, but when one thinks of the awful dust, the heat stroke, the sand flies, the mud roofs that leak, the streets too narrow for even a Ford, the camels that bite, the donkeys that balk, the cholera, and general filth, one wonders just a little where the Englishman gets his grit. The amount of headache he goes through is staggering. And when one remembers that the Mohammedan, deprived by his religion of art in many forms, is apt to give vent to his temperament through the most artistic lying, official as well as unofficial, one has nothing left but wonder and praise for the man who pioneers in the western development of an eastern country. And when one thinks of the schools and hospitals, of the irrigation and the near roads, of the justice and patience, one is convinced that the interests of the country are in good hands.

If Persia and Mesopotamia are wise, they will learn the lessons of just government and honest industry from the British. When they have learned, there will still be ample opportunity for them to "exploit" their own country in the same manner, for the British have never yet left a country poorer than they found it.

AN APOLOGY FOR ETHICS*

GEORGE P. ADAMS

There is no single field of study dealing with human life and society which is not at the present time beset with doubt and perplexity concerning its fundamental aims, its method, and its relation to the entire field of humanistic studies. This is true of psychology, economics, history, sociology, and also ethics. And I suspect that this is more true of ethics than of these other studies, for reasons which may best be made evident if I enumerate certain outstanding characteristics of the traditional handling of the method and subject matter of ethics. We shall then be in a position to raise the question as to the competency of such a study to deal with the major ethical problems of society at the present time.

There exists a wide uniformity in the way in which the subject matter of ethics is viewed, and the manner in which that subject matter is taught, in college and university courses in ethics. The procedure is commonly as follows: It is first made clear to the student that ethics belongs to a group of sciences, sharply marked off from the sciences comprising a different group. Ethics, it is urged, is a normative science, to which group also belong logic and aesthetics. These normative sciences are supposed to be concerned with a wholly different kind of problem and subject matter

A paper read before the Kosmos Club, October 4, 1920.

from that with which the descriptive sciences deal. The descriptive sciences aim at an orderly description of such existing facts, relations, and processes as fall within their respective fields of observation. They deal with what, as a matter of fact, does exist or has existed. The normative sciences, on the other hand, concern themselves exclusively with what ought to exist, with standards and values, ideals and goals.

With this as a basis, then, one proceeds to formulate the central problem of ethics thus: How shall one define the most comprehensive and the highest good, the thing which, above all else, ought to exist, the final and inclusive goal of human life? And then, with this as the problem, it appears that during twenty-five hundred years of European ethics but two fundamental types of answer to this question have emerged, and have constituted the arena of ethical debate and controversy. The traditional course in ethics consists in giving an historical survey of these two rival ethical systems together with a restatement of the argument and dialectic which may be thought to verify one system and refute the other. On the one hand, there have been those who have answered this question of the highest good in terms of human perfection, the perfecting of human nature, and there have been those who have answered it in terms of human happiness. Of course, there have been countless compromises and syntheses, variations of all kinds and degrees. Nevertheless, the course in ethics normally revolves around the perennial debate between Stoic and Epicurean, Kantian and Utilitarian, Perfectionist and Hedonist. And, it may be said, the chances are that the official teachers of ethics weigh all the arguments, all the dialectic against Hedonism and in favor of some variety of Perfectionism. Of course there is abundant opportunity in such a program for wide excursions into interesting and bewildering fields. One dips into psychology, into the analysis of impulses, desires, and

volitions; one surveys the conflicts between egoism and altruism, one discourses concerning the mysteries of conscience and the sense of duty, and one constructs a system and doctrine of the virtues. But so far as theoretical ethics is concerned, the facts are as I have stated them. Ethics has been, and still is, for the most part, a reflective consideration of the relative claims of perfection and happiness as candidates for the office of the highest good. This is the traditional mould in which ethics has been cast. I should not wish to imply that fresh departures have not from time to time been made. Especially in modern ethics have reform movements of great interest and importance arisen. But these departures have been, until quite recently, more of the nature of eddies within the main stream of traditional ethical reflection than sustained attempts to review the entire body of assumptions and premises upon which ethics has hitherto rested.

For, ethical systems and moral ideals have presuppositions and premises. They are not suspended in a vacuum; they are embedded within the social forces and institutions, habits of thought and ideas, which comprise the stuff of history and of civilization. The very form in which the problem of ethics is stated has its roots, not solely in the current problems of morality, but in the outlying and all but unconscious intellectual habits which are the reflection, within men's minds, of the prevailing social order. Take the central question of traditional ethics, what is the highest good? Philosophers and moralists have commonly started in to attempt an answer to this question without first asking what it may mean to assume that there does exist one single, highest good. The question as to what the highest good is naturally and inevitably arises in a world where both the social order and men's habits of thought derive their validity from some highest, centralized authority, divine, monarchical, rational, feudal or some other. Perhaps