=Nevertheless.=--The matter therefore, as regards pro and con, stands
thus: in the present state of philosophy an awakening of the moral
observation is essential. The repulsive aspect of psychological
dissection, with the knife and tweezers entailed by the process, can no
longer be spared humanity. Such is the imperative duty of any science
that investigates the origin and history of the so-called moral feelings
and which, in its progress, is called upon to posit and to solve
advanced social problems:--The older philosophy does not recognize the
newer at all and, through paltry evasions, has always gone astray in the
investigation of the origin and history of human estimates
(Werthschaetzungen). With what results may now be very clearly perceived,
since it has been shown by many examples, how the errors of the greatest
philosophers have their origin in a false explanation of certain human
actions and feelings; how upon the foundation of an erroneous analysis
(for example, of the so called disinterested actions), a false ethic is
reared, to support which religion and like mythological monstrosities
are called in, until finally the shades of these troubled spirits
collapse in physics and in the comprehensive world point of view. But if
it be established that superficiality of psychological observation has
heretofore set the most dangerous snares for human judgment and
deduction, and will continue to do so, all the greater need is there of
that steady continuance of labor that never wearies putting stone upon
stone, little stone upon little stone; all the greater need is there of
a courage that is not ashamed of such humble labor and that will oppose
persistence, to all contempt. It is, finally, also true that countless
single observations concerning the human, all-too-human, have been
first made and uttered in circles accustomed, not to furnish matter for
scientific knowledge, but for intellectual pleasure-seeking; and the
original home atmosphere--a very seductive atmosphere--of the moral
maxim has almost inextricably interpenetrated the entire species, so
that the scientific man involuntarily manifests a sort of mistrust of
this species and of its seriousness. But it is sufficient to point to
the consequences: for already it is becoming evident that events of the
most portentous nature are developing in the domain of psychological
observation. What is the leading conclusion arrived at by one of the
subtlest and calmest of thinkers, the author of the work "Concerning the
Origin of the Moral Feelings", as a result of his thorough and incisive
analysis of human conduct? "The moral man," he says, "stands no nearer
the knowable (metaphysical) world than the physical man."[19] This
dictum, grown hard and cutting beneath the hammer-blow of historical
knowledge, can some day, perhaps, in some future or other, serve as the
axe that will be laid to the root of the "metaphysical necessities" of