sition almost uniformly unfortunate. Moreover, a good many of his very numerous criticisms of Hobbes are somewhat wide of the mark. It might seem as if there were little use in attempting to revive interest in this practically forgotten moralist. Yet the curious fact is, that Cumberland alone, of the English ethical writers of his time, sounds modern, as we read him to-day. Hobbes and Cudworth were greater men; More had a more charming personality; but when we read their works, we feel that Egoism, Intellectualism, and theological Mysticism, as foundations of ethical theory, belong essentially to the past. Cumberland, on the other hand, 'builded better than he knew.' He was the first exponent, in England, at least, of a tendency which for a long time practically dominated English Ethics. And even this is not all. Though writing more than a century and a half before the publication of the Origin of Species, he viewed society as an organic whole. Perhaps no single phrase would express his ideal so completely as 'the health of the social organism'; and yet we regard that formula as the peculiar property of the present generation. Moreover, if he recognizes 'preservation' and 'perfection' on the one hand, and 'happiness' on the other, as parallel principles, we must concede that neither of these principles has definitely supplanted the other even yet. Indeed,—if one may venture to attribute anything like unanimity to the constructive ethical literature of the last few years, it may be said that what is now being sought, more than anything else, is some principle at once comprehensive enough to combine these two seemingly antagonistic notions in a higher synthesis, and definite enough to serve as the basis of a coherent system of Ethics.
Ernest Albee
