Philosophy usurps no foreign power; but it is not disposed to relinquish its right of examination over all the great manifestations of human nature. All philosophy that does not terminate in ethics, is hardly worthy of the name, and all ethics that do not terminate at least in general views on society and government, are powerless ethics, that have neither counsels nor rules to give humanity in its most difficult trials. It seems that at the point where we have arrived, the metaphysics and aesthetics that we have taught evidently involve such a doctrine of morality and not such another, that, accordingly, the question of the good, that question so fertile and so vast, is for us wholly solved, and that we can deduce, by way of reasoning, the moral theory that is derived from our theory of the beautiful and our theory of the true. We might do this, perhaps, but we will not. This would be abandoning the method that we have hitherto followed, that method that proceeds by observation, and not by deduction, and makes consulting experience a law to itself. We do not grow weary of experience. Let us attach ourselves faithfully to the psychological method; it has its delays; it condemns us to more than one repetition, but it places us in the beginning, and a long time retains us at the source of all reality, and all light. The first maxim of the psychological method is this: True philosophy invents nothing, it establishes and describes what is. Now here, what is, is the natural and permanent belief of the being that we are studying, to wit, man. What is, then, in relation to the good, the natural and permanent belief of the human race? Such is, in our eyes, the first question. With us, in fact, the human race does not take one side, and philosophy the other. Philosophy is the interpreter of the human race. What the human race thinks and believes, often unconsciously, philosophy re-collects, explains, establishes. It is the faithful and complete expression of human nature, and human nature is entire in each of us philosophers, and in every other man. Among us, it is attained by consciousness; among other men, it manifests itself in their words and actions. Let us, then, interrogate the latter and the former; let us especially interrogate our own consciousness; let us clearly recognize what the human race thinks; we shall then see what should be the office of philosophy. Is there a human language known to us that has not different expressions for good and evil, for just and unjust? Is there any language, in which, by the side of the words pleasure, interest, utility, happiness, are not also found the words sacrifice, disinterestedness, devotedness, virtue? Do not all languages, as well as all nations, speak of liberty, duty, and right?