Christianity and Ethics | Page 9

good or virtue of
mankind, and is occupied with an ideal society in which each
individual shall be able to realise the true aim and meaning of life. But
after all, as Aristotle said, Politics is really a branch of Ethics, and both
are inseparable from, and complementary of each other. On the one
hand, Ethics cannot ignore the material conditions of human welfare
nor minimise the economic forces which shape society and make
possible the moral aims of man. On the other hand, Economics must
recognise the service of ethical study, and keep in view the moral
purposes of life, otherwise it is apt to limit its consideration to merely
selfish and material ends.
V. While Ethics is thus closely connected with the sciences just named,
there are two departments of knowledge, pre-supposed indeed in all
mental studies, which in a very intimate way affect the science of
Ethics. These are Metaphysics on the one hand and Psychology on the
other.
1. Metaphysics is pre-supposed by all the sciences; and indeed, all our
views of life, even our simplest experiences, involve metaphysical
assumptions. It has been well said that the attempt to construct an
ethical theory without a metaphysical basis issues not in a moral
science without assumptions, but in an Ethics which becomes confused
in philosophical doubts. Leslie Stephen proposes to ignore Metaphysics,
and remarks that he is content 'to build upon the solid earth.' But, as has
been pertinently asked, 'How does he know that the earth is solid on
which he builds?' This is a question of Metaphysics.[7] The claim is
frequently made by a certain class of writers, that we withdraw
ourselves from all metaphysical sophistries, and betake ourselves to the
guidance of commonsense. But what is this commonsense of which the
ordinary man vaunts himself? It is in reality a number of vague

assumptions borrowed unconsciously from old exploded
theories--assertions, opinions, beliefs, accumulated, no one knows how,
{18} and accepted as settled judgments.[8] We do not escape
philosophy by refusing to think. Some kind of theory of life is implied
in such words, 'soul,' 'duty,' 'freedom,' 'power,' 'God,' which the
unreflecting mind is daily using. It is useless to say we can dispense
with philosophy, for that is simply to content ourselves with bad
philosophy. 'To ignore the progress and development in the history of
Philosophy,' says T. H. Green,[9] 'is not to return to the simplicity of a
pre-philosophic age, but to condemn ourselves to grope in the maze of
cultivated opinion, itself the confused result of these past systems of
thought which we will not trouble ourselves to think out.' The aim of all
philosophy, as Plato said, is just to correct the assumptions of the
ordinary mind, and to grasp in their unity and cohesion the ultimate
principles which the mind feels must be at the root of all reality. We
have an ethical interest in determining whether there be any moral
reality beneath the appearances of the world. Ethical questions,
therefore, run back into Metaphysics. If we take Metaphysics in its
widest sense as involving the idea of some ultimate end, to the
realisation of which the whole process of the world as known to us is
somehow a means, we may easily see that metaphysical inquiry, though
distinct from ethical, is its necessary pre-supposition. The Being or
Purpose of God, the great first cause, the world as fashioned, ordered
and interpenetrated by Him, and man as conditioned by and dependent
upon the Deity--are postulates of the moral life and must be accepted as
a basis of all ethical study. The distinction between Ethics and
Philosophy did not arise at once. In early Greek speculation, almost to
the time of Aristotle, Metaphysics and Morals were not separated. And
even in later times, Spinoza and to some extent Green, though they
professedly treat of Ethics, hardly dissociate metaphysical from ethical
considerations. Nor is that to be wondered at when men are dealing
with the first principles of all being and life. Our view of God and of
the {19} world, our fundamental Welt-Anschauung cannot but
determine our view of man and his moral life. In every philosophical
system from Plato to Hegel, in which the universe is regarded as having
a rational meaning and ultimate end, the good of human beings is
conceived as identical with, or at least as included in the universal

good.
2. But if a sound metaphysical basis be a necessary requisite for the
adequate consideration of Ethics, Psychology as the science of the
human soul is so vitally connected with Ethics, that the two studies
may almost be treated as branches of one subject. An Ethic which takes
no account of psychological assumptions would be impossible.
Consciously or unconsciously every treatment of moral subjects is
permeated by the