ny with the
higher demands and larger ideals which have been disclosed to him.
This has been the invariable course of ethical inquiry. At different
stages of history--in the age of the Sophists of Ancient Greece, when
men were no longer satisfied with the old forms of life and truth: at
the dawn of the Christian era, when a new ideal was revealed in Christ:
during the period of the Reformation, when men threw off the bondage of
the past and made a stand for the rights of the individual conscience:
and in more recent times, when in the field of political life the
antithesis between individual and social instincts had awakened larger
and more enlightened views of civic and social responsibility--the
study of Ethics, as a science of moral life, has come to the front.

Ethics may, therefore, be defined as the science of the end of
life--the science which inquires into its meaning and purpose. But
inasmuch as the end or purpose of life involves the idea of some good
which is in harmony with the highest conceivable well-being of
man--some good which belongs to the true fulfilment of life--Ethics may
also be defined as the science of the highest good or _summum bonum_.

Finally, Ethics may be considered not only as the science of the
highest good or ultimate end of life, but also as the study of all that
conditions that end, the dispositions, desires and motives of the
individual, all the facts and forces which bear upon the will and shape
human life in its various social relationships.

II. Arising out of this general definition three features may be
mentioned as descriptive of its distinctive character among the
sciences.

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1. Ethics is concerned with the _ideal_ of life. By an ideal we mean
a better state of being than has been actually realised. We are
confessedly not as we should be, and there floats before the minds of
men a vision of some higher condition of life and society than that
which exists. Life divorced from an ideal is ethically valueless.
Some conception of the supreme good is the imperative demand and moral
necessity of man's being. Hence the chief business of Ethics is to
answer the question: What is the supreme good? For what should a man
live? What, in short, is the ideal of life? In this respect Ethics as
a science is distinguished from the physical sciences. They explain
facts and trace sequences, but they do not form ideals or endeavour to
move the will in the direction of them.