In thus defining the conditions under which human freedom exists, we have, I surmise, also discovered the secret of ethical obligation, of pragmatic urgency. That is to say, whenever an action is possible, when it is not opposed by restraints beyond a man’s power to overcome, when he has the skill with which to perform it, and when he can will it as well as wish it, and when also the performance of this action increases the range of his effectiveness, then, but not till then, can it be said that he _ought_ to perform it. The expressions, “I ought,” or “I should,” henceforth mean: “I imagine that there would be greater freedom if this course of action which I contemplate were to be carried out.” Under this new conception of pragmatic urgency, oughting is neither a _vis a tergo_, nor a _vis a fronte_, nor yet Somebody’s fiat superadded to the data of ethics, but it is simply the logical resultant of the conditions of such human activity as produces dependable goods. We recognize no valid obligations imposed upon men from above; obligations are rather implicit in any activity which employs a man’s skill to satisfy his needs at the same time that it educates his desires. It is thus plain that there is no fundamental difference between ethics and any other science. Just as the business of physical science is to describe the conditions under which any phenomenon occurs, so the business of ethical science is to ascertain, by a study of the mechanisms of human behavior, the conditions which underlie all of our ethical values. Wisely indeed did Protagoras remark that “Man is the measure of all things,” but it was not until many centuries after this statement had been made that a positively constructive interpretation, could be put upon it. FOOTNOTES: [22] George Clarke Cox, “The Public Conscience,” p. 25. CHAPTER X THE ACQUISITION OF AN ETHICAL TECHNIQUE “One of the reasons why pantheistic revery has been so popular is that it seems to offer a painless substitute for genuine spiritual effort.... When pushed to a certain point the nature cult always tends towards sham spirituality. ‘Oh world as God has made it All is beauty, And knowing this is love, and Love is duty, What further can be sought for or desired?’ It seems to follow from these lines of Browning, perhaps the most flaccid spiritually in the English language, that to go out and mix oneself up with the landscape is the same as doing one’s duty. As a method of salvation this is even easier and more æsthetic than that of the Ancient Mariner, who, it will be remembered, is relieved of the burden of his transgression by admiring the color of water-snakes!” IRVING BABBITT, “Rousseau and Romanticism.” “Objection: Will not this end in ethical scepticism? Answer: Nothing is further from scepticism than the conception of a reality subject to laws, and of a rational action based on the knowledge of those laws.”