there is no single and inclusive highest good; perhaps the goods of life are diverse and many, comprising a federal and pluralistic scheme rather than a single, pyramidal system. The point is that the question, what is the highest good, presupposes that there is a single, authoritative good, and that this assumption reflects a social and intellectual system in which anything different would be unthinkable. Hence, it is of great importance to lay bare and to analyze the tacit assumptions and premises of the traditional approach to ethics. When these underlying premises are made explicit, they are seen to conform to and agree with certain of the assumptions and organizing principles upon which European society and civilization have hitherto been based. The present theoretical confusion, whose existence and importance no one may question, as to the scope and method of ethics is but a reflection and echo of the practical confusion which characterizes society at the present time. I turn then to an examination of certain initial assumptions underlying the structure and procedure of traditional ethics.

The first and determining presupposition grows out of the distinction already referred to, that, namely, between descriptive, and normative sciences. There is, of course, a distinction between the way in which men have acted and do act, and the way in which men ought to act. There is obviously a similar distinction between the way in which men do, as a fact, happen to think and reason, and the way in which they ought to think. It appears that if you set about merely to describe actual and existing processes of life, conduct, and thought, you will, say, make no distinction between the vagaries of a lunatic's thinking and the carefully controlled and reasoned thought processes of a trained mathematician. The world of describable and existing processes holds them both. Likewise, the world of history and of human deeds, the policies and careers of groups and of nations,

contain a paralyzing medley of heroism and cowardice, reasoned insight and stupidity, sustained devotion to duty and blind pursuit of what is mean and ignoble. How can one possibly discriminate between the good and the bad if he merely describes things as they are? Such discrimination, all standards and ideals which may enlighten and guide human practice, it has seemed, must be derived not from any describable facts as such but from elsewhere. But now observe the implication for conduct and for social practice of just this apparently necessary and innocent distinction. The result is that no objective situation whatever which may be described and known, and consequently no knowledge whatsoever, can be of any use to men in determining their conduct, in resolving their conflicts, in controlling the texture of society and of civilization. Let me state this as forcibly as I may. It can scarcely be overstated. Wherever any question arises as to what men ought now to do, in all matters touching human relationships and the life of society, all science, i.e., knowledge of existing facts and processes, is by implication ruled out if ethics is removed from the family of the descriptive sciences, those sciences which have for their aim an orderly knowledge of man and of the world in which he finds himself. Let one pick up at random almost any exposition of what ethics is all about and he will find some such statement as this: "Now the distinctive character of ethics is that it is concerned with the question of ought, the question of right and wrong, good and bad. It is concerned, that is, with a question lying beyond the bounds of scientific procedure, beyond verification, beyond induction, beyond actuality. Therefore we can have a history of ethics but no science of it."" Now it is as clear as daylight that if science, knowledge of existing facts and processes, is to be ruled out when it comes to problems of conduct and of social policies, there is in the large only one alternative, some form of an appeal to authority.

1 Maciver, Community, p. 53.

Authority has, in the past, assumed more than one form. There is religious authority, the declared and revealed will of God, as set forth in a book or a church. There is social authority, the sheer pressure of the group, of public opinion and of custom. And lastly, there is that puzzling and bewildering thing which men have called human reason, and it is to the authority of reason that much philosophical ethics has made its appeal. Now I am ready to plead guilty to the charge of oversimplification, of glossing over important distinctions, and of subjecting the rich tradition of philosophical ethics to the Procrustean bed of brief and schematic assertions. Nevertheless, I am prepared to say that what philosophical ethics has commonly included within the concept of reason has been a hybrid. "Reason" has been and is an adumbration of a supposed divine and transcendental faculty of man, distinct from every natural, i.e., biological and social, aspect of human nature. To appeal to the guidance of reason, in this aspect of the matter, is precisely to appeal to nothing factual, empirical, and descriptive, but to a sublimation of divine authority. But reason has been and still is a name for a confused variety of existing human interests and values which are just as much a part of the world of existing facts and structures as are men's livers and brains. Moralists and philosophers have time and again thought that they were founding morality and society, law, obligation, and authority, upon some inherently authoritative norm, divine or rational, when in reality they have been simply noting the presence, within their world, of certain actual facts and processes. They have thought their procedure to be normative, whereas it was really, though often in an obscure way, descriptive. Something similar has, I suspect, occurred in the history of mathematics. Men have, until quite recently, supposed that the process of thinking was something radically different from the process of observing data;

mathematics has frequently been classified as a deductive science. If I am not mistaken, it is no longer so classified by sound thinkers. Mathematics is as inductive as meteorology or geology. At least, after you have got your initial postulates and definitions, all that you do is to watch the manner in which they lead on and develop into other ideas and propositions. The procedure is not essentially different from that of watching a chemical reaction, a political revolution, or any process whatsoever. There is little doubt that the entire group of conventional distinctions which have hitherto served to erect barriers between kindred intellectual pursuits, and to blind men's eyes to the common task and method of intelligence everywhere, has been little short of disastrous. Such are the contrasts between deductive and inductive, reasoning and observation, a priori and empirical, normative and descriptive, philosophy and science.

The point is that, so far as the problems of ethics are concerned, the traditional distinction between descriptive and normative sciences has afforded a sanction for the belief that, when it comes to the question as to how men should order their lives and their institutions, something other than knowledge should furnish guidance. And all the while that this point of view has been fastening itself upon ethics, the modern world has increasingly become habituated to the use of intelligence -science and knowledge-in all those regions of our life in which we deal with physical nature. If it is a question as to how a city ought most economically and efficiently to provide an adequate water supply, we recognize that there is no guidance except in science, knowledge based upon describable facts. These objective data, mastered by intelligence, yield norms. engineering practice, in medicine, and in certain restricted regions of social practice such as industrial management and the arts of advertising, any such

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distinction as that between normative and descriptive science is meaningless. The only distinction is that of theory and practice, and men agree that the only intelligent practice is that which is based upon precise knowledge. In so far as ethics has built its structure upon this radical cleavage between descriptive and normative method, ethics has cut itself off from any possibility of applying to the problems of life and of society the intellectual tools which we apply to problems elsewhere.

But this present situation has other roots than the distinction between two types of science. For two thousand years and more morality, and consequently ethics, has been fundamentally individualistic. What is meant by this statement is simply this. Let us start by saying that a moral problem exists only within an area over which an individual may exercise some control, and within which the individual may be held responsible for whatever happens. So much is taken for granted by everyone. Whatever falls outside the boundaries of such an area of control and responsibility falls outside the scope of moral judgments. Ever since the break-up of the ancient world, ever since Plato and Aristotle, this area within which moral problems arise has, in the main, been confined to the area of individual conduct. And, more often than not, it has been still further restricted, to the region namely, of motives and intentions, the good will, the inner life and character of the individual, divorced from all concrete content and consequences. Ethics has, in substance, said just this. Let the individual organize and discipline his own individual conduct and character, his motives and his inner life. All else falls outside the moral area. In the entire stretch of time from later Greek ethics down to the present, this limitation of the moral area to the domain of the individual has assumed two different forms. Down until the opening of the modern era it was stated in religious terms and was justified in the light of religious and