sychologically by showing the simple ideas or feelings
and the causal connections or laws of habit and association out of which
actions arise. Or anthropologically we may show the successive stages of
custom and taboo, or the family, religious, political, legal, and social
institutions from which morality has emerged. But we meet at once a
difficulty if we ask what is the bearing of this description and
analysis. Will it aid me in the practical judgment "What shall I do?" In
physics there is no corresponding difficulty. To analyze gravity enables
us to compute an orbit, or aim a gun; to analyze electric action is to
have the basis for lighting streets and carrying messages. It assumes
the uniformity of nature and takes no responsibility as to whether we
shall aim guns or whether our messages shall be of war or of peace.
Whereas in ethics it is claimed that the elements are so changed by
their combination--that the _process_ is so essential a factor--that no
prediction is certain. And it is also claimed that the ends themselves
are perhaps to be changed as well as the means. Stated otherwise,
suppose that mankind has passed through various stages, can mere
observation of these tell me what next? Perhaps I don't care to repeat
the past; how can I plan for a better future? Or grant that I may
discover instinct and emotion, habit and association in my thinking and
willing, how will this guide me to direct my thinking and willing to
right ends?

The second method has tended to examine concepts. Good is an eternal,
changeless pattern; it is to be discovered by a vision; or right and
good are but other terms for nature's or reason's universal laws which
are timeless and wholly unaffected by human desires or passions; moral
nature is soul, and soul is created not built up of elements,--such were
some of the older absolutisms. Right and good are unique concepts not to
be resolved or explained in terms of anything else,--this is a more
modern thesis which on the face of it may appear to discourage analysis.
The ethical world is a world of "eternal values." Philosophy "by taking
part in empirical questions sinks both itself and them." These doctrines
bring high claims, but are they more valuable for human guidance than
the empirical method?[65]

"The knowledge that is superhuman only is ridiculous in man." No man can
ever find his way home with the pure circle unless he has also the art
of the impure. It is the conviction of this