independent of philosophy?

It does not seem that we can do this. We are concerned with
psychological phenomena, and their nature and significance are by no
means beyond dispute. For example, there is the feeling of moral
obligation, of which ethics has so much to say. What is this feeling,
and what is its authority? Is it a thing to be explained? Can it
impel a man, let us say, a bigot, to do wrong? And what can we mean by
credit and discredit, by responsibility and free choice, and other
concepts of the sort? All this must remain very vague to one who has
not submitted his ethical concepts to reflective analysis of the sort
that we have a right to call philosophical.

Furthermore, it does not seem possible to decide what a man should or
should not do, without taking into consideration the circumstances in
which he is placed. The same act may be regarded as benevolent or the
reverse according to its context. If we will but grant the validity of
the premises from which the medieval churchman reasoned, we may well
ask whether, in laying hands violently upon those who dared to form
independent judgments in matters of religion, he was not
conscientiously doing his best for his fellow-man. He tried by all
means to save some, and to what he regarded as a most dangerous malady
he applied a drastic remedy. By what standard shall we judge him?

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