Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/572

 H. SIDGWICK, OUTLINES OF HISTORY OF ETHICS. 571 and ecclesiastical law ; and there is everywhere a vast congeries of social observances out of which there has hitherto failed to emerge any formulation of principle. Of the latter, or raw material of morality, a history of ethics in the common acceptation does not treat. But of the other or theological ethics it is for English readers necessary to give so much account as is due to its eminent co-operation towards forming the views on the ultimate aim and law of conduct held even by those who claim to be emancipated from the special traditions of Christianity. Mr. Sidgwick's work is a record of the attempts made by Greek and Koman philosophers, by the Fathers and Schoolmen of the Catholic Church, and by a succession of English essayists, to formulate the law of human life, to indicate the grounds on which it was based and the methods by which it could be ascertained. This limitation of the sketch is from what are called practical considerations entirely justifiable. Yet, even without entering on a minute examination of outlying fields, it would have been well to indicate (in such terms as may become the non-specialist in oriental learning) the wider scope of a history of ethics which should include (inter alia] the products of moral reflection in China and in ancient India. A history presupposes a certain unity of subject-matter. Ac- cordingly Mr. Sidgwick begins by briefly stating the scope of the ethical problem in somewhat the following terms. The subject of ethics is the study of man's well-being (variously conceived as virtue or pleasure), with some explanation of the nature of the moral law or of duty, and of those psychological conditions in the individual, which contribute to mould or modify his sense of obligation or conscience. So far as the being or well-being of each depends on that of his community, this complication of requirements makes the province of ethics overlap that of social and political science. So far as the laws of the universe affect man, morals depends upon metaphysics or on general physics ; and so far as the law of conduct is referred to a divine legislator, ethics is co-terrninous with theology. But if ; as in English moralists, these problems are left on- one side, moral psychology comes to usurp the w r hole ethical province as its own. The only fault which we have to find with this description is that it is little else than an abstract resume of the facts presented elsewhere in the book under their historical aspect. And perhaps Mr. Sidgwick would urge that to state the differences in concep- tion of the ethical problem as understood at different ages is enough for the historian. He neither adopts the standpoint of the bold theorist who, possessed of a firm conception of the " science of ethics," assigns to past and present thinkers their place in his model scheme, nor on the other hand does he make the sceptical suggestion that ethics is nothing but a rhapsody of prolegomena and metaphysics, and that the diversity of its methods is a consequence of its radical incoherency of plan. Yet even the critical historian may usefully supply a more searching