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TUB 8GOPS OF ETHICS 153
used in reaching them have been employed in a legitimate
sense. Thus, ethical arguments tend to be circular because
their conclusions can only be reached if words are used
in a certain way, while it is only if the conclusions are true
that the words may be legitimately used in the sense
required to reach them.
These circles can, in the writer's opinion, only be
broken, if we are prepared to concede that discussions
on ethics must in the last resort pass into realms where
results, not being reached by reason, cannot be rationally
demonstrated. In other words, the ultimate basis of ethics
is, in my view, intuitional and not rational The life of
man is very various, and reason, though it is our surest
guide, is not our only one. Man imagines as well as
intuits as well as
experiences; guesses as well as knows;
reasons. It may well be the case that judgments of ultimate
valuation, which seek to prescribe what is beautiful, whit
is good and what is right, are made by a faculty that
operates above the humdrum pedestrian levels upon which
reason functions. This view, which is in part a personal
one, will be developed in a later chapter. 1
(5) THE DIFFICULTY OF DELIMITATION. ETHICS AND
PSYCHOLOGY. A fifth difficulty is that of delimiting the
boundaries of ethics. That ethics is, or can be, closely
interlocked with politics we have already seen. This inter-
locking is, I think, inevitable, and will remain so, until
some form of political Utopia has been achieved in which
the State can be relegated to the background of men's
lives as an organization which, necessary for the main-
tenance of the minimum conditions of order and security,
which alone render possible the pursuit of the good life,
lies outside the range of their conscious interests. Until
that consummation is reached, politics must remain in-
dissolubly bound up with ethics. But it is not politics alone
which encroach upon the sphere of ethics; there is also
psychology. The subject matter of ethics clearly includes
1 See Chapter XII, pp. 436-438.