ot
conscientiously doing his best for his fellow-man. He tried by all
means to save some, and to what he regarded as a most dangerous malady
he applied a drastic remedy. By what standard shall we judge him?

There can be no doubt that our doctrine of the whole duty of man must
be conditioned by our view of the nature of the world in which man
lives and of man's place in the world. Has ethics nothing to do with
religion? If we do not believe in God, and if we think that man's life
ends with the death of the body, it is quite possible that we shall set
for him an ethical standard which we should have to modify if we
adopted other beliefs. The relation of ethics to religion is a problem
that the student of ethics can scarcely set aside. It seems, then,
that the study of ethics necessarily carries us back to world problems
which cannot be approached except by the path of philosophical
reflection. We shall see in Chapter XX that the theistic problem
certainly belongs to this class.

It is worthy of our consideration that the vast majority of writers on
ethics have felt strongly that their science runs out into metaphysics.
We can scarcely afford to treat their testimony lightly. Certainly it
is not possible for one who has no knowledge of philosophy to
understand the significance of the ethical systems which have appeared
in the past. The history of ethics may be looked upon as a part of the
history of philosophy. Only on the basis of some general view as to
nature and man have men decided what man ought to do. As we have seen
above, this appears sufficiently reasonable.

73. AESTHETICS.--Of aesthetics, or the science of the beautiful, I
shall say little. There is somewhat the same reason for including it
among the philosophical sciences that there is for including ethics.

Those who have paid little attention to science or to philosophy are
apt to dogmatize about what is and what is not beautiful just as they
dogmatize about what is and what is not right. They say
unhesitatingly; This object is beautiful, and that one is ugly. It is
as if they said: This one is round, and that one square.

Often it quite escapes their attention that what they now regard as
beautiful struck them as unattractive a short time before; and will,
perhaps, when the ceaseless change of the fashions has driven it out of
vogue, seem strange and unattractive once more. Nor do they reflect
upon the fact that others, who seem to have