lem. But it is his only positive contribution. At
the outset of his inquiry he ought to have no other ideals. Were he
interested peculiarly in the triumph of any one kind of good, he would
_pro tanto_ cease to be a judicial investigator, and become an advocate
for some limited element of the case.

There are three questions in ethics which must be kept apart. Let them
be called respectively the _psychological_ question, the _metaphysical_
question, and the _casuistic_ question. The psychological question
asks after the historical _origin_ of our moral ideas and judgments;
the metaphysical question asks what the very _meaning_ of the words
'good,' 'ill,' and 'obligation' are; the casuistic question asks what
is the _measure_ of the various goods and ills which men recognize, so
that the philosopher may settle the true order of human obligations.

I.

The psychological question is for most disputants the only question.
When your ordinary doctor of {186} divinity has proved to his own
satisfaction that an altogether unique faculty called 'conscience' must
be postulated to tell us what is right and what is wrong; or when your
popular-science enthusiast has proclaimed that 'apriorism' is an
exploded superstition, and that our moral judgments have gradually
resulted from the teaching of the environment, each of these persons
thinks that ethics is settled and nothing more is to be said. The
familiar pair of names, Intuitionist and Evolutionist, so commonly used
now to connote all possible differences in ethical opinion, really
refer to the psychological question alone. The discussion of this
question hinges so much upon particular details that it is impossible
to enter upon it at all within the limits of this paper. I will
therefore only express dogmatically my own belief, which is this,--that
the Benthams, the Mills, and the Barns have done a lasting service in
taking so many of our human ideals and showing how they must have
arisen from the association with acts of simple bodily pleasures and
reliefs from pain. Association with many remote pleasures will
unquestionably make a thing significant of goodness in our minds; and
the more vaguely the goodness is conceived of, the more mysterious will
its source appear to be. But it is surely impossible to explain all
our sentiments and preferences in this simple way. The more minutely
psychology studies human nature, the more clearly it finds there traces
of secon