problems as to the origin and adequacy of conscience, as to the meaning and validity of voluntary action; the questions concerning motives and desires, as to the historical evolution of moral customs, and man's relation at each stage of his history to the social, political and religious institutions amid which he lives--are subjects which, though falling within the scope of Ethics, have their roots in the science of the soul. The very existence of a science of Ethics depends upon the answers which Psychology gives to such questions. If, for example, it be decided that there is in man no such faculty or organ as conscience, and that what men so designate is but a natural manifestation gradually evolved in and through the physical and social development of man: or if we deny the self-determining power of human beings and assume that what we call the freedom of the will is a delusion (or at least, in the last resort, a negligible element) and that man is but one of the many phenomena or facts of a physical universe--then we may continue, indeed, as some evolutionary and naturalistic thinkers do, to speak of a science of Ethics, but such a science will not be a study of the moral life as we understand it and have defined it. Ethics, therefore, while dependent upon the philosophical sciences, has its own distinct content and scope. The end of life, that for which a man should live, with all its implications, forms the subject of moral inquiry. It is {21} concerned not merely with what a man is or actually does, but more specifically with what he should be and should do. Hence, as we have seen, the word 'ought' is the most distinctive term of Ethics involving a consideration of values and a relation of the actual and the ideal. The 'ought' of life constitutes at once the purpose, law, and reason of conduct. It proposes the three great questions involved in all ethical inquiry--whither? how? and why? and determines the three great words which are constantly recurring in every ethical system--end, norm, motive. Moral good is the moral end considered as realised. The moral norm or rule impelling the will to the realisation of this end is called Duty. The moral motive considered as an acquired power of the acting will is called Virtue.[11] [1] Cf. Mackenzie, _Manual of Ethics_, p. 32; also Wuttke, _Christian Ethics_ (Eng. Trans.), vol. i. p. 14. [2] _Metaph. of Morals_, sect. i. [3] Mackenzie, _Manual of Ethics_, p. 8. See also Muirhead, _Elements of Ethics_. [4] Hyslop, _Elements of Ethics_, p. 1. [5] Schiller, _Ueber Anmuth und Wuerde_. Cf. also Ruskin, _Mod. Painters_, vol. ii.; Seeley, _Natural Religion_, and Inge, _Faith and its Psychology_, p. 203 ff. See also Bosanquet _Hist. of Aesthetic_. We are indebted to _Romanticism_, and especially to Novalis in Germany and Cousin in France for the thought that the good and the beautiful meet and amalgamate in God. [6] Browning. [7] Cf. Newman Smyth, _Christian Ethics_, p. 8.