PROLEGOMENA TO ETHICS. in 



Ethics " will owe its place in English philosophy to 

 the earlier rather than to the later books. 



It is a serious thing to begin with metaphysics 

 when we have almost talked ourselves into the belief 

 that anything which we cannot "touch and taste 

 and handle " is unreal, or at best a field for intel- 

 lectual gymnastics. And this Mr. Green felt. It 

 was only the necessity of the case which compelled 

 him to do as he has done. It may seem strange 

 indeed to some that after nineteen centuries of 

 Christianity, and at a time when the Christian 

 morality is accepted by all civilized nations, it should 

 be necessary to write " Prolegomena to Ethics " 

 at all. The science of ethics implies a metaphysic 

 of ethics undoubtedly, but is not that metaphysic 

 of ethics supplied by Christian theology on which 

 from the first Christian ethics has been based ? 

 Such a question can only come from one who 

 ignores or has reason to doubt what certain people 

 now take for granted viz., that dogmatic theology 

 has had its day, and the Church remains only as 

 a fossilized shell in which a living germ is still 

 hidden. Some, indeed, go further, and deny the 

 existence even of the germ ; but then they believe 

 in a kind of moral archebiosis which in the physical 

 world they are slow to accept. Thus, the Intro- 

 duction to the " Prolegomena to Ethics " speaks of 

 people who are " wearied of the formulas of a 

 stereotyped theology, but still demand free in- 



