w. They show how moral customs and moral
ideas adapted to them have arisen, and how these ideas and customs
have corresponded with the institutions of the time to which they
belonged. Their tendency, accordingly, is to restrict ethics to
the question of origin and history and description, to deprive it
altogether of what is sometimes called its normative character--that
is to say, its character as a science which lays down rules or sets up
ideals for conduct. They would take away from it altogether the power
of determining and establishing a criterion between right and wrong.
In other words, the fundamental ethical question would be entirely
excluded from the scope of the science of ethics.[1]

[Footnote 1: Cf. Green, 'Prolegomena to Ethics,' p. 7: "A philosopher
who would reconstruct our ethical systems in conformity with the
doctrines of evolution and descent, if he would be consistent, must
deal less scrupulously with them than perhaps any one has yet been
found to do. If he has the courage of his principles, having reduced
the speculative part of them to a natural science, he must abolish the
practical or preceptive part altogether."]

That, so far as I can see, is the tendency of a good deal of quite
recent writing from the point of view of the evolution school: in the
face of controversy and in the face of difficulties to give up the
attempt which they started on so confidently thirty years ago,--the
attempt to show that evolution affords a means of deciding between
right and wrong and of establishing an ideal for human conduct.
Failing in this attempt, they seem to turn round and say that ethics
should content itself with describing facts instead of laying down a
law or setting up an ideal.

Now, whatever truth there may be in the assertion of the difficulty
of determining an ideal for conduct, there is one thing certain: that
whether or not the ideal can be philosophically or scientifically
defined and established, some ideal is always being set up. Human
action implies choice, implies the selection of one course rather
than another; and the course that is chosen is always chosen for some
reason, because it seems better than the course which is passed by.
Choice always follows some kind of principle. We may use different
principles at different times, we may use badly established
principles, we may use uncriticised principles, but principles we do
use, and we cannot act voluntarily without using them, even wh