to be found in that life itself, not in the dispensation of any future state. In harmony with this view, the spirit of all the discussions is favorable to a scientific rather than a metaphysical method of ethics. There are, indeed, occasional references to a metaphysic of ethics, the function of which is to deal with problems touching the ultimate source and ground of that actual moral order, the facts of which a science of ethics collects, analyzes, classifies, and proximately explains. But the emphasis of the entire discussion clearly rests upon this scientific task. This emphasis is, I conceive, eminently sane. The course of the development of ethics has been making strongly in this direction. How few have been the positive contributions of metaphysics to ethics in the last fifty years, contrasted with the wealth of new material which has been offered by psychology, history, and the anthropological sciences' generally! It is to a still more careful scrutiny of the facts of our individual and social life that we must look for progress in this department of thought.
In conclusion, it must be said that the book has the inevitable defects of its merits. From its composite character it necessarily lacks any principle of progressive development. The repetitions of thought incident to the treatment of similar themes are constant. Several of the papers bear rather plainly the ear-marks of the 'occasional address.' And only in a very limited degree is the volume a contribution to the scientific treatment of the problem suggested in the title. The purpose of making a strictly scientific contribution, however, both the writers and collectors, I doubt not, would be the first to disavow. But in addition to its other elements of interest and value, the book contains not a few pages which by virtue of their inspiring character deserve a place in any collection of ethical scriptures.
| Walter Goodnow Everett. |
| Brown University. |
