ETHICS AND OTHER DISCIPLINES
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?
