and all-containing End.[1] It becomes necessary to reassert the distinction between a normative and a natural science, in these days when the effort is made to 'naturalize the moral man,' to resolve the Ought-consciousness into the Is-consciousness. I will close with the mention of an eminent living authority for the Aristotelian limitation of ethics to what may be called the relative or human Good. Professor Sidgwick, in his History of Ethics (ch. i), describes ethics as the study of 'the Ultimate Good of man,' as distinguished from 'Theology, the study of the Absolute Good.' "The qualification 'for man,'" he says, "is important to distinguish the subject-matter of ethics from the Absolute Good or Good of the Universe, which may be stated as the subject-matter of Theology." Mr. Sidgwick's own work is an admirable illustration of that which I have tried to describe as the true 'method of ethics.' It is as devoid of metaphysics as the Nicomachean Ethics itself, and, while it never exchanges the normative for the naturalistic standpoint, it is, as a sustained and penetrative cross-examination of the moral common-sense of mankind, well entitled to the name which the Evolutionists in ethics have endeavored to preempt for themselves, the 'science of ethics.'
James Seth.
- ↑ In this practical sense, as Professor Mackenzie points out (Manual of Ethics, p. 5), there are many other normative sciences, e.g., medicine, architecture, rhetoric. If, however, we define a normative science as a science of the ideal or of value, such an extension of the term is excluded, since there are only three types of ideals, only three standards of value,—the logical, the aesthetic, and the ethical.
