Even though this be admitted, it guides us only a little ways through the tangle of ethical problems. In the first place, no such dramatic portrayal as, for example, that of Zoroaster,—whatever theatrical agonies it might provoke,—has either reduced the sum of the world’s distresses, or furnished the least insight into the nature of the supposed opposites of goodness. For that matter, indeed, very little knowledge of this character has arisen out of ethical debate or speculation. The assumptions have been many, the facts few; and usually, whenever this discrepancy has been realized, overdrafts have been written on the phantom bank of theory with the vain hope that by this means ethical solvency could be attained. In the second place, it has scarcely occurred to any one to ask whether there was not some other way of looking at the ethical problem than in this duplex manner, for if an irreconcilable opposition in the field of ethics is assumed as a fundamental principle, nothing but an eternal deadlock can result in the conclusion. Now the empirical fact is that man’s muscles (the functions of which determine his thoughts), can do other things than oppose and counteract each other, for every day of our lives we see these other motor activities manifested. However, our traditional ethical theory would have it that the dilemma is inescapable,—that things are either good or bad, or actions either right or wrong, and people either virtuous or vicious, and that there is no middle ground, or possibility of reconciliation. Mark, however, that only in serious pathological cases do we observe a complete rigidity of the body due to chronic muscular antagonisms. Is it not therefore a valid inference that the mental rigidity of most adherents to the bi-polar theory in ethics is likewise a pathological sign, and, if so, are we not driven to the conclusion that man’s traditional ethical notions are symptoms of physiological malfunctioning? Important as all this is, however, it cannot turn us aside from our interest in finding out just to what an extent the word “bad” is a real antonym to the word “good,” especially since knowledge of this sort is first necessary before we can employ the method of science in the service of the problems of human conduct. Let us, then, resume our original search.