(2) He should take cognizance of his own setting--of the social
conscience embodied in the community in which he lives.

(3) And since, as we have seen, the significance, either of the
individual conscience, or of the social conscience revealed in custom,
law and public opinion, can hardly become apparent to one who does not
bring within his horizon many consciences individual and social, he
should enlarge his view so as to include such. The moralists, in our day,
show an increasing tendency to pay serious attention to this mass of
materials. They do not confine their attention to the moral standard
which this man or that has accepted as authoritative for him, nor to that
accepted as authoritative in a given community. They study _man_--
man in all stages of his development and in material and social settings
the most diverse.

(4) Nor should the student of ethics overlook the work which has been
done by those moralists who have gone before him. He who has studied
descriptive anatomy is aware of the immense service which has been done
him by the unwearied observations of his predecessors; observations which
have been put on record, and which draw his attention to numberless
details of structure that would, without such aid, certainly escape his
attention. Ethics is an ancient discipline. It has fixed the attention of
acute minds for many centuries. He who approaches the subject naively,
without an acquaintance with the many ethical theories which have been
advanced and the acute criticisms to which they have been subjected, will
almost certainly say what someone has said before, and said, perhaps,
much better. The valor of ignorance will involve him in ignominious
defeat.

(5) It is evident that the moralist must make use of materials offered