ETHICAL SUBJECTIVISM.
OVER against the doctrinaire who looks thrice at the datum that bids fair to contradict his presuppositions, stands the scientific observer who will let theories wait while he gathers his facts. This latter is the true eclectic. He welcomes all truth, and he is committed to none. He presses no single theory to its outcome, because in no one rather than another does he find the promise of a complete explanation of the observed phenomena. Against any school or tendency of thought that shows signs of narrowness or partiality, his hostility is unwavering. He must have candor in the presence of the facts.
To men of this temper, no doctrine is more thoroughly distasteful than the ethical subjectivism, which holds that conduct invariably right which the agent believes to be right. The position has, it is true, some support in popular philosophy. "A man can but do his best," say the proverb-mongers. But, on the other hand, they tell us that "ignorance is no excuse"; and no character is more generally detested than the self-righteous bigot. Shall we adopt as our moral ideal the psalm-singing dolt who has not wit enough to perceive his own egotism? Ethical subjectivism—we hear it said—fails doubly: first, to satisfy the intellectual need of a standard of moral evaluation; and, second, to satisfy the practical needs of social conservatism. For what possibility is there of ethical science, when the man in his individual finitude, with all the accidents and distortions of his peculiar environment, becomes the measure of things? And what escape is there from social anarchy, if each may do what is right in his own eyes?
But the theory not only offends the common good-sense of the eclectic; it comes into conflict also with the principles of a most ancient and worthy body of ethical thought. Scarcely a thinker of importance, from Plato down, if he does not hold that virtue is knowledge, would go so far as to deny that it includes knowl-
