165. SCIENCES THAT CONCERN THE MORALIST.—There are certain sciences that the Moralist must lay under contribution very directly, and yet he seems to be able to make little return to those who cultivate them, at least in their professional capacity.
He must ask aid from the biologist, the psychologist, the anthropologist. They help him to a comprehension of what man is; and, hence, of what it is desirable that man should strive to do. But these men seldom come to the moralist for advice. They appear to be able to work without his help.
There are, however, other sciences in which the moralist feels that he has more of a right to meddle, however independent they may regard themselves.
Take, for example, politics or economics, or the very modern and rudimentary science of eugenics. The man who cultivates political science may know much more than do most moralists about states and their forms of organization; about legislative, executive and judicial functions; about the probable effects of the centralization or decentralization of authority; about what may be expected, in a given case, from a restriction or extension of the franchise; about the creation and maintenance of a military establishment and the building up of an efficient civil service. The economist may be a monster of learning and a master in ingenuity on all problems touching the creation and distribution of wealth.
But the political scientist and the economist, however able, share our common humanity. A man's outlook is more or less apt to be bounded by the limits of the science of his predilection. The several sciences, broader or more specialized, rest, in the minds of most men, upon foundations which are taken for granted. It is too much to expect that every sermon should begin as far back as the Garden of Eden. "Practical" politics and economics do not, as a rule, go so far back.
The transition from practical politics and economics to ethical problems may be made at any time. No man was shrewder than Machiavelli, and the moral sense of mankind has rebelled against him and made him a byword. A state, desirous of maintaining itself, may palpably violate in its institutions, inherited from the past, a social will grown more rational, more conscious of its rights and more articulate. Then the appeal is made to right and justice in other than the traditional forms. It may, in a given instance, be wrong to create wealth; existing forms of its distribution may be iniquitous. The ultimate arbiter in all such matters must be the Ethical Man.
Human society is indefinitely complex. Many specialists must occupy themselves with its problems. A technical question in this field may always be carried over to moral ground. He who undertakes to make this transition without having made a fairly thorough study of ethics appears to be working in the dark. His assumptions have been questioned, or have been abandoned. Who shall furnish him with a new basis for his special science?
Ethics is a basal science. It justifies, or it refuses to justify, those specialists who concern themselves with men in societies. It is a very old science and has interested men vastly. I have spoken above of eugenics as a new science. Only in its modern form is it new. Plato cultivated it intemperately when he wrote his "Republic"—but he saw that his "Republic" would not do, and he wrote his "Laws." He stood condemned by Ethics.
Usually men who occupy themselves seriously, and in a broad way, with man in society, have adopted, consciously or unconsciously, some ethical doctrine. But this is often done without due consideration, and without a sufficient knowledge of what has been said by the great thinkers of the past. It is for this reason that I have treated at such length in this volume of the schools of the moralists.
166. ETHICS AND PHILOSOPHY.—It should be observed that in developing the Ethics of the Rational Social Will, or the Ethics of Reason—the doctrine advocated in this volume—I have not depended upon a particular philosophy.