Excerpt from Ethics, an Investigation of the Facts and Laws of the Moral Life, Vol. 1<br><br>T has been my object in the present work to investigate the problems of ethics in the light of an examination of the facts of the moral life. One reason for this procedure is my desire to conduct the reader by the same path that I myself have followed in approaching ethical questions. But that apart, I believe it to be the sole method by which we can hope to establish ethics upon an empirical founda tion. There has been no lack either of speculative or of psychological essays in the moral sphere, and I am more than ready to give both their due. But I think that we must look to ethics to supply the corner stones of meta physics, of our final and comprehensive View of the universe and so it seems to me inadvisable to reverse the relation of the two disciplines and base moral philosophy upon meta physics. As to psychology, I have personally found it to be so necessary a propaedeutic and so indispensable an aid to ethical investigations, that I do not understand how any one can do without it But the psychology of the moralists belongs for the most part to the days of the older empiricism. It is, to my thinking, altogether too individualistic in its point of view; besides which, it has not advanced beyond that 3 stage of popular thought at which subjective interpretations of facts are naively intermingled with the facts themselves. The straight road to ethics lies, I believe, through et/znzc psychology, whose especial business it is to consider the history of custom and of ethical ideas from the psycho logical standpoint.<br><br>About the Publisher<br><br>Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com<br><br>This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.