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CHAPTER I.—NATURE OF ETHICAL THEORY.
Section I.—Subject-matter Of Ethics:

SUBJECT-MATTER of ethical theory is judgment concerning the value of conduct. Three stages. (1) Practical encouragement and discouragement of certain acts. Reward and punishment primary forms of such judgments. Next stage, urging and restraint through speech. (See Plato, Protagoras, 325-26.) Third stage, reflective judgment as to reason for such acts.

Ethical theory is simply (1) a systematic judgment of value. The way is prepared for this through the fact that primitive judgments relate not to isolated acts, but to habits of action, and to the types of character which are disposed to induce those habits. Necessary spontaneous generalizations. Codes, customary and legislative.

Demand for more systematic generalization arises when, through an extension of the area of life, former habits begin to conflict with each other. Illustrated by Athenian life; by Roman; by modern since the Renascence. Ethical theory is thus (2) a critical judgment upon conduct. Not systematic in the sense that it simply catalogues previous judgments, but in the sense that it attempts to reconstruct them on the basis of a deeper principle. (See Sec. 2.)

It is a matter of indifference whether we say ethical theory attempts to systematize (in the above sense) judgments about the value of conduct, or attempts to systematize conduct itself. Every act (consciously performed) is a judgment of value: the act done is done because it is thought to be worth while, or valuable. Thus a man's real (as distinct from his nominal or symbolic) theory of conduct can be told only from his acts. Conversely, every judgment about conduct is itself an act; it marks a practical and not simply a theoretical attitude. That is, it does not lie outside of the matter judged (conduct), but constitutes a part of its development; conduct is different after, and because of the judgment. Ill. in education, where the main point is not so much to get certain acts done, as to induce in the child certain ways of valuing acts, from which the performance of the specific deeds will naturally follow. That is, the best education aims to train conscience. Ethical theory is only a more conscious and more generalized phase of conduct. Analogy with place of theory in modern (experimental) science. A theory not a fixed or abstract truth, but a standpoint and method for some activity. It is in this (the activity as directed by theory) that the value of the theory comes out and is tested. (See Sec. 3.)….