TYPES OF ETHICAL THEORY. 103 



To those who have neither time nor inclination 

 to read through two octavo volumes, and who 

 nevertheless wish to be acquainted with the great 

 facts of moral science, we confidently commend 

 the first one hundred and twenty pages of Vol. II., 

 which should be read in close connection with the 

 author's intellectual history sketched in his preface. 

 It is a full and fearless statement of the facts, by 

 one who is fully conscious of the arguments com- 

 monly urged against them. Dr. Martineau does 

 not shrink from an argument because it is an old 

 one. He knows that an argument is never worn 

 out till it is answered. He appeals to the judg- 

 ments of the adult moral consciousness, as he 

 appeals to language, "the great confessional of 

 the human heart." What, then, are the objects 

 of those moral judgments which we all pass ? 

 Persons, not things ; thoughts and feelings, not 

 mere conduct. Here he can claim on his side 

 Mr. Spencer and Mr. Leslie Stephen, Professor 

 Green and Mr. Bradley, as well as the Christian 

 ethics of the Sermon on the Mount. But he is 

 at issue with the current opinion of moralists 

 when he argues, most truly as we believe, that 

 "criticism, like charity, begins at home," that a 

 moral judgment is primarily a self -judgment, and 

 does not begin with "a prior critique upon our 

 fellow-men." A further analysis of the moral 

 judgment brings out the distinction between mere 



