nd that is the science
which, for want of a better name, we must call ethics or moral
philosophy. The interweaving of this logic of practice with various
natural sciences that have man or society for their theme, leads to much
confusion in terminology and in point of view. Is the good, we may ask,
what anybody calls good at any moment, or what anybody calls good on
reflection, or what all men agree to call good, or what God calls good,
no matter what all mankind may think about it? Or is true good something
that perhaps nobody calls good nor knows of, something with no other
characteristic or relation except that it is simply good?

Various questions are involved in such perplexing alternatives; some are
physical questions and others dialectical. Why any one values anything
at all, or anything in particular, is a question of physics; it asks for
the causes of interest, judgment, and desire. To esteem a thing good is
to express certain affinities between that thing and the speaker; and if
this is done with self-knowledge and with knowledge of the thing, so
that the felt affinity is a real one, the judgment is invulnerable and
cannot be asked to rescind itself. Thus if a man said hemlock was good
to drink, we might say he was mistaken; but if he explained that he
meant good to drink in committing suicide, there would be nothing
pertinent left to say: for to adduce that to commit suicide is not good
would be impertinent. To establish that, we should have to go back and
ask him if he valued anything--life, parents, country, knowledge,
reputation; and if he said no, and was sincere, our mouths would be
effectually stopped--that is, unless we took to declamation. But we
might very well turn to the bystanders and explain what sort of blood
and training this man possessed, and what had happened among the cells
and fibres of his brain to make him reason after that fashion. The
causes of morality, good or bad, are physical, seeing that they are
causes.

The science of ethics, however, has nothing to do with causes, not in
that it need deny or ignore them but in that it is their fruit and
begins where they end. Incense rises from burning coals, but it is
itself no conflagration, and will produce none. What ethics asks is not
why a thing is called good, but whether it is good or not, whether it is
right or not so to esteem it. Goodness, in this ideal sense, is not a
matter of opinion, but of nature. For intent is at work, life is