There can be no doubt that our doctrine of the whole duty of man must be conditioned by our view of the nature of the world in which man lives and of man’s place in the world.  Has ethics nothing to do with religion?  If we do not believe in God, and if we think that man’s life ends with the death of the body, it is quite possible that we shall set for him an ethical standard which we should have to modify if we adopted other beliefs.  The relation of ethics to religion is a problem that the student of ethics can scarcely set aside.  It seems, then, that the study of ethics necessarily carries us back to world problems which cannot be approached except by the path of philosophical reflection.  We shall see in Chapter XX that the theistic problem certainly belongs to this class.

It is worthy of our consideration that the vast majority of writers on ethics have felt strongly that their science runs out into metaphysics.  We can scarcely afford to treat their testimony lightly.  Certainly it is not possible for one who has no knowledge of philosophy to understand the significance of the ethical systems which have appeared in the past.  The history of ethics may be looked upon as a part of the history of philosophy.  Only on the basis of some general view as to nature and man have men decided what man ought to do.  As we have seen above, this appears sufficiently reasonable.

73.  AESTHETICS.—­Of aesthetics, or the science of the beautiful, I shall say little.  There is somewhat the same reason for including it among the philosophical sciences that there is for including ethics.

Those who have paid little attention to science or to philosophy are apt to dogmatize about what is and what is not beautiful just as they dogmatize about what is and what is not right.  They say unhesitatingly; This object is beautiful, and that one is ugly.  It is as if they said:  This one is round, and that one square.

Often it quite escapes their attention that what they now regard as beautiful struck them as unattractive a short time before; and will, perhaps, when the ceaseless change of the fashions has driven it out of vogue, seem strange and unattractive once more.  Nor do they reflect upon the fact that others, who seem to have as good a right to an opinion as they, do not agree with them in their judgments; nor upon the further fact that the standard of beauty is a thing that has varied from age to age, differs widely in different countries, and presents minor variations in different classes even in the same community.

The dogmatic utterances of those who are keenly susceptible to the aesthetic aspects of things but are not given to reflection stand in striking contrast to the epitome of the popular wisdom expressed in the skeptical adage that there is no disputing about tastes.