8. (b) Metaphysical difficulty of Transcendentalism itself. (1) In Kantianism, an empty and unreal freedom CHAPTER I. THE ETHICAL PROBLEM. 1. Ethics is the science of morality or conduct. A preliminary notion of what is meant by these terms will serve to bring out the nature of the inquiry on which we are entering. 1 Morality is described by Locke as "the proper science and business of mankind in general." In the same spirit Aristotle says that the task of ethics is the investigation of the peculiar and characteristic function of manthe activity (¿vépyea), with its corresponding excellence (aperý), of man as man. And "can we suppose," he asks, "that, while a carpenter and a cobbler each has a function and a business of his own, man has no business and no function assigned him by nature?" Morality might in this sense be called the universal and characteristic element in human activity, its human element par excellence, as distinguished from its particular, technical, and accidental elements. Not that the moral is a smaller and sacred sphere within the wider spheres of secular interests and activities. It is rather the all-inclusive sphere of human life, the universal form which embraces the most varied contents. It is that in presence of which all differences of age and country, rank and occupation, disappear, and the man himself stands forth in all the unique and intense significance of his human nature. Morality 1 Nic. Eth., i. p. 7 (11). is the great leveller; life, no less than death, makes all men equal. We may be so lost in the minute details. and distracting shows of daily life that we cannot see the grand uniformity in outline of our human nature and our human task; here, as elsewhere, we are apt to lose the wood in the trees. But at times this uniformity is brought home to us with startling clearness, and we discover, beneath the utmost diversity of worldly circumstance and outward calling, our common nature and our common duty. The delineation of this, the proper business of mankind in general, is the endeavour of ethical science. Conduct, according to Matthew Arnold, is threefourths of life, the other fourth being the province of the intellectual and æsthetic as distinguished from the moral life. But when truly conceived, as expressive of character, conduct is the whole of life. As there is no action which may not be regarded as, directly or indirectly, an exponent of character, so there is no most secret thought or impulse of the mind but manifests itself in the life of conduct. Nor can the intellectual and emotional life be separated from the volitional or moral. If, indeed, with Spencer, we extend the term 'conduct' so as to cover merely mechanical as well as reflex organic movements, then we must limit the sphere of ethics to "conduct as the expression of character." But, in the sense indicated, the conduct of life may be taken as synonymous with morality. Such conduct embraces the life of intellect and emotion, as well as that which is, in a narrower sense, called practice -the life of overt activity. Man's life is one, in its most diverse phases; one full moral tide runs through them all. Spen But let us analyse conduct a little more closely. cer defines it as the adjustment of acts to ends, and we may say it is equivalent to purposive activity, or more strictly, in conformity with what has just been said, con |