5

But the main subject of their inquiries has been, What is good? Now it does not seem to me that this is a normative question: it is pre-normative. A normative research supposes a definite end and seeks the conditions, voluntarily or involuntarily of its attainment. But to ask what is good, not as a means, but in itself; not for a reason, but back of every reason, is a more fundamental investigation. It is to ask a question which every normative science supposes to be already answered. Pure ethics, then, philosophical ethics, the doctrine of the summum bonum, is not a normative, but a prenormative science.

This being granted, it will naturally be asked why a chapter of this book should be devoted to ethics; and I suspect that more than one reader may be inclined to skip the chapter as surplusage. Never mind, they will say, whether it is good to know the truth or