BOOK I. § 3. Relation of Ethic to Politic. $4. Connection History, and portance felt; and this is what underlies the terms, moral obligation, duty, moral sense, moral law, and the like, which we have seen are the watchwords of one of the two great schools of moralists. In history, the origin and separate existence of the Spiritual Power, the Church, are the manifestation of the same phenomenon, conscience asserting itself against power, the conviction that there is something in practical judgments which gives them a validity superior to any force or might which they derive from motives of happiness, whether these are exhibited as attractive or deterrent, as pleasures or as pains, as rewards or as punishments. What precisely this something is, in what precisely consists the supreme validity of conscience, demands a more searching analysis of the facts or phenomena of consciousness, and that subjectively, than they have as yet received. § 4. 1. It follows from what has been said, that between Ethic, the method proper to Ethic is that of subjective or Physiology internal observation. Actions and habits, and chains of actions and habits, are objectively nothing but events and chains of events, and these may be observed and examined without any more reference to subjective feelings than is necessary in the case of physical phenomena, the succession of waves on a beach, or the stages of growth and development of But the moment we enter on the consideration either of the motives or springs of action, or of the end aimed at in actions, we enter on the question of the value of feelings to the agent, their comparative value in kind, and in degree of intensity. We have to consider what these motives and ends are to him as feelings; and the same is the case with the actions of men in masses and the events of his a tree. BOOK I. Cн. 1. § 4. Connection between Ethic, Physiology. tory. For when we would form a judgment of the comparative value of the goal to which the actions. of a nation or of the race appear to be tending, or of the several tendencies which compose its entire History, and course, we have to ask what feelings and thoughts that goal or course will consist of, what capacities for enjoyment will be developed, what characters will be produced, what the minds of the men will be. This necessity for entering on the subjective analysis of feelings in order to determine their comparative value to consciousness is irrespective of the view which we may take as to the merits of the Utilitarian school or its opposite. All consideration of motive or of end, whether these consist of pleasure only or also of duty, all practical enquiry, involves the taking up a subjective point of view. Pleasure and pain in all their kinds and degrees are subjective feelings, the names of them do not even appear to have a meaning apart from such feeling, nor can we reason about them without bearing in mind their subjective significance. But physical objects, actions of men and events of history, though equally consisting of subjective feelings in their last analysis, and therefore capable of being subjectively treated, yet can be also analysed as objective things, and their laws discovered, without the necessity of a constant reference to the fact of this subjective constitution and nature; we need not be constantly translating the terms describing them and their sequences into terms significant of their subjective aspect; it is enough that they can be so translated if occasion for such verification should arise; otherwise the course of investi gation would be interrupted, the objects being sufficiently well known in their objective aspect. 2. Although therefore there is no class of objects which is not capable of being examined both in its objective and in its subjective aspect, there are yet two classes of objects which are most effectively treated, the one from its subjective, the other from its objective side. Physical objects, generally, belong to the class which is most effectively treated from the objective side, and are objects of special empirical sciences. Among these may be distinguished, for the purposes of the present work, first, the nerves and nervous organism as forming one whole class of the causes of states of consciousness; and secondly, those changes of sequence in physical objects which are known as human actions and historical events. But on the other hand, feelings and thoughts, in all their varieties, among which it has been shown that everything which is a motive or an end of action must be reckoned, belong to the class which can be best treated subjectively, which indeed can be only treated subjectively, so long as the phenomena belonging to it have not been made, by the course of thought, into complete and familiar objects, with names which have a definite and admitted connotation, as in the case of physical objects. 3. Now it has been shown in § 2, that Ethic comprises two branches, to one of which, the speculative, it is now clear that the study of actions and events, of changes in physical circumstances, and especially of nerve structure and function, as causes of feeling and thought, belongs; while to the other, the practical branch, belongs the study of feelings and thoughts, and of ends and motives of action. This latter study is also necessarily the study of feelings and thoughts as they are to the individual, because only to an in dividual do they appear in the character of feeling and thought; as belonging to masses of men they are feelings and thoughts of the individuals composing the mass. Ethic therefore can only be completely and satisfactorily studied by a combination of the three sciences of History, Nervous Physiology, and the Metaphysical analysis of states of consciousness in the individual; but it is nevertheless the last of these which is the chief domain and distinguishing feature of Ethic, in virtue of its being a practical science; and this it is which renders it a branch of Metaphysic. Neither history nor nervous physiology can be pursued entirely without reference to subjective analysis, since it would deprive the events described in history of all significance, if they could not be compared in respect of the value of the tendencies which they exhibit; and the investigation into the structure and functions of nervous matter would be left equally without meaning (assuming that the nervous organism generally is the organ upon which feeling and thought depend), if we did not attach or endeavour to attach some mode of feeling or change of feeling to each different structure and different function of nerve as it was discovered. So also, on the other hand, subjective analysis has to depend upon history for the conditions which surround and modify the feelings and thoughts of the individual imagined to be under analysis, and upon nervous physiology for the causes producing or supporting the individual's feelings and thoughts, and bringing external objects, actions, and events, to bear upon them by acting upon nerve. But there is also a great part in each of these three studies, which is peculiar to it and independent of the other two. BOOK I. § 4. Connection between Ethic, History, and Physiology. BOOK I. § 4. between Ethic, History, and Physiology. The analysis of feelings and thoughts and their sequences by themselves, or in their character as feelConnection ing and thought, apart from their conditions and causes, is the independent part of subjective analysis. The conclusions reached by such analysis may be suggested and supported by the collateral conclusions of history and physiology; but the analysis itself must be conducted on its own independent basis. Were it not independent it could give no support in its turn to the conclusions of history or physiology; and yet it has been seen that they do receive such a support, in the significance which is lent to their conclusions by the feelings attached to them or involved in them. § 5. 1. Since subjective analysis is to be the staple of the present work, and yet there is at the present day a deep distrust and dislike, even among men of science, to anything that bears the name of subjective or internal observation, or worse still of Metaphysic, a distrust and dislike which I cannot but think unreasonable and erroneous, I venture (though it is a task I would gladly avoid) to enter at somewhat greater length upon the true meaning and real validity of this method. For Metaphysic also claims to be a part of positive science, if by positive is meant verifiable. And first to take up the matter from the point already reached, the study of history compared with that of the individual. 2. It has been ably maintained by Auguste Comte and others that the study of the organisation and development of society, that is, of men in masses or of the whole human family, must precede the investigation of the organisation and development of the individual consciousness, the study of which is |