Once more, then, we realize that “virtue” and “vice” are not true antonyms. We saw this to be the case with “good” and “bad,” and likewise with “right” and “wrong.” It is only when these pairs of terms are used with the most severely restricted denotation, that is, with a provincial bias, that their opposition and contradiction appears. Such bias is also shown, when it is said that the glutton and the debauché “really know that they shouldn’t” indulge themselves as they do, a statement which signifies something like this: If these men who do what I call “wrong” were only to act as I direct, they would not be censured. Obviously so, but what a host of fallible assumptions this involves! It is merely ignoring the problem, and such a treatment furnishes no hint as to its solution. One begins to doubt the validity of all praise and blame as profitable ethical instruments. Besides, the appeal to self-censure, as employed in the above case, is, in the end, relatively inefficacious in actual practice, and is hence illogical as a basic principle in ethical theory. Indeed, it is idle to say that we all know what we should do; if we had that much information, we would act upon it, for the will and the intellect, as Spinoza remarked, are one and the same. The great need in ethics is to get right down to the empirical facts of conduct and to let them teach us, rather than to hide the facts behind a screen of pious insincerity. Importunate chiding may be a traditional tool of morality, but it does not contribute anything to the establishment of an ethical science. Consequently we shall have to reject any definition of the vices which goes no further than to describe them as those actions which some observer regards as unprofitable. It may be that such a definition superficially fits a great many cases, but great danger lies in accepting it without scrutiny, since it tends to imply that ethics is merely a study of _opinions_ about conduct, and not of conduct itself. Now, no other science is a study of opinions, not even the normative sciences of bridge-building or landscape gardening; and ethics is no exception to this general rule. Moreover, since we do not know of any absolutely wise observer to whose opinion we can appeal in every doubtful case, a true definition of vice has not yet been achieved.