if not one of the profoundest, thinkers in the whole development of English ethics. He was the first to state the utilitarian principle in its wholly differentiated form. Indeed, two generations before Paley 's time, he outlined, in his remarkable thirty-page Dissertation all that was essential in the older (so-called 'theological' ) utilitarianism. A careful comparison will show that Paley followed the line of Gay's argument step by step, just as he confessedly appropriates much available material from Tucker's diffuse but valuable treatise. It is to be noted, by the way, that the editor was probably justified in excluding Tucker (and giving extracts from Brown and J. Clarke, as, with Paley, representing this school), since the author of The Light of Nature, while more original as a thinker than any one of the other three, was so hopelessly diffuse in style, and so unsystematic in order of exposition, that satisfactory brief selections from his writings could hardly have been made.
The last words of the preface are: "The Introduction only pretends to be what it is called." This statement is not the less misleading, because it is a good example of the editor's undoubted modesty. Though written in clear and vigorous style, the Introduction to a large extent presupposes the very information which it might be expected to convey. In fact, it will be more likely to interest the teacher of ethics than the student, even after the latter has read the selections with some care. Practically no attention is paid to the historical development of English ethics, the discussion being topical throughout. One feels, therefore, that one is getting at the editor's own critical standpoint in a way that was quite impossible from an examination of his editorial work on the two Hume volumes; and even when one cannot at all agree with the interpretation or evaluation of particular authors, one is bound to feel grateful to the editor for his very vigorous and searching analysis. He is hampered by no conventionalities. For example, in speaking of Kant and the British moralists, he says: "There is little in him that is not in them, though his general attitude towards ethics is a different and more distinguished one." (p. xxxvi). And again: "Since Kant the will has been freely referred to as the ultimate residence of virtue, but not always with profit" (p. liii).
One passage, and perhaps only one in the whole Introduction, seems to imply a real misapprehension of the meaning of the writer criticised. Mr. Selby-Bigge says: "Gay, who was by no means a supporter of absolute fitnesses, puts forward the relations of things as the criterion of happiness in very much the way in which Clarke had at-
