of conscious beings it would still be of absolute worth, but because its value is a generally recognized fact in a community of conscious beings. On this account it is possible for the economist to criticise the efficiency of the various articles which serve as money. This criticism consists in the purely objective description of the consequences of the use of these various things. He shows that, when a great amount of paper is circulated and is not redeemable by gold or silver, it depreciates. This is criticism, but it is mere description. Now this unimpassioned description of consequences which are disagreeable is easily confounded with a hortatory treatment of the subject, for the very good reason that often the economist, assuming the existence of certain likes and dislikes, loads his statement of economic fact with economic harangue, and because the reader often meets the scientific statement with very strong emotional and voluntary reaction. But the harangue of the economist and the feelings and resolutions of the reader or hearer are not science, though they may be the normal response to scientifically ascertained fact. The science in it all is nothing but the methodically obtained knowledge of fact; and this knowledge often includes, as in this case, a knowledge of unpalatable circumstances. An unimpassioned expression of such knowledge of unrelished but removable fact is scientific criticism. Such criticism may play a large part in ethics; but in any objective ethics the criticism must not be a philippic against some practice merely obnoxious to isolated personal prejudice, but a true statement of the harmful consequences of certain modes of conduct.
III. It is often debated whether ethics is a theoretical or a practical science. What has already been said as to the normative and yet merely descriptive character of ethics should help us solve this question. Just as all sciences are descriptive, so all sciences are theoretical, that is, they are concerned with the rational explanation of experienced facts. Rational explanation is not the a priori demonstration of the necessity of facts. That is, it is not an attempt to show that things cannot possibly be other than they are. It is merely ascertainment of actual uniformities of connection between phenomena, i.e., it is compre-
