ABSTRACT
One of the more delicious prerogatives of the philosopher is that of telling other people where their duties and obligations lie, and what they ought to do. Ethics is a traditional branch of philosophy; and, with the exception of a few modern heretics, all professors of ethics have been primarily concerned to discover the rules of right and wrong, and to disseminate their discoveries. Of course, not every preacher is a philosopher; and if philosophers have a pre-eminent claim to our attention when they choose to moralize that is in large part because they do not, professionally at least, offer piecemeal and dogmatic injunctions, but are prepared to provide some general prescriptions for conduct which are systematic, rational, and analytic. The natural tendency of the human mind to proffer advice and instruction might lead us to expect that ethics was a subject of interest to the earliest Presocratic philosophers. Their historical circumstances, and their known practical bent, support that expectation. A potent drive to ethical reflexion has always been given by observation of the radical differences in moral outlook from country to country and from age to age. Such observation was made by quick-minded Greek travellers of the sixth century; and if Xenophanes was moved by his acquaintance with different religious beliefs to advance a rational theology, surely acquaintance with different moral beliefs would move him and his peers to investigate the grounds of morality?
