This is evident from the fact that the examples with which ethics and æsthetics try to work upon reality are usually not quite consistent and are often foolish. And how far from simple is whatever is laid down in either this or that! How the assertions made contradict each other! The guidance that an artist can get for his activities from the best works on æsthetics is but small. Similarly, a business man who seeks in a work on ethics advice as to how, in any given case, he is to bring the demands of his business into harmony with those of ethics, can seldom find any satisfactory information. The inadequacy in this respect of æsthetics is not of great importance for the spiritual life of mankind. Artistic activity is always the peculiar affair of individuals whose natural gifts develop more by the actual production of works of art than by consideration of the conclusions arrived at by æsthetic theorizing. With ethics, however, it is a matter of the creative activity of the mass of men, an activity which is largely determined by the principles which are current in the general thought of the time. The absence of that progress which is still possible in ethics is something tragic. Ethics and æsthetics are not sciences. Science, as the description of objective facts, the establishment of their connexion with one another, and the drawing of inferences from them, is only possible when there is a succession of similar facts to be dealt with, or a single fact in a succession of phenomena, when, that is, there is a subject matter which can be reduced to order under a recognized law. But there is no science of human willing and doing, and there never can be. Here there are only subjective and infinitely various facts to be studied, and their mutual connexion lies within the mysterious human ego. It is only the history of ethics that is scientific, and that [pg 021] only so far as a history of man’s spiritual life is scientifically possible. The importance of thought about ethics There is, therefore, no such thing as a scientific system of ethics; there can only be a thinking one. Philosophy must give up the illusion which it has cherished even down to the present day. As to what is good and what is bad, and about the considerations in which we find strength to do the one and avoid the other, no one can speak to his neighbour as an expert. All that one can do is to impart to him so much as one finds in oneself of that which ought to influence everybody, though better thought out perhaps, and stronger and clearer, so that noise has become a musical note.