112 SSAYS SCIENTIFIC AND PHILOSOPHICAL. 



diligence for the appetite which that theology 

 supplied with a regulation-diet" (p. i). Mr. 

 Herbert Spencer, in the " Data of Ethics," goes 

 further. He is quite willing to believe that dog- 

 matic theology is a thing of the past, but he has 

 a profound mistrust of metaphysics. We are, 

 therefore, told in his Preface that 



"The establishment of rules of right conduct on a scientific" 

 (z>. positive) " basis is a pressing need. Now that moral 

 injunctions are losing the authority given by their supposed 

 sacred 'origin, the secularization of morals is becoming 

 imperative." 



Supposing, now, for the sake of argument, that 

 dogmatic theology has something still to say in the 

 present as it has had in the past, we find that 

 ethics becomes the battle-ground of the three 

 great tendencies of the human mind the positive, 

 the metaphysical, and the theological. Mr. Spencer 

 is prepared to give us a natural science of morals, 

 and nothing could be more acceptable to the 

 present age than this, if it does not demand too 

 great a sacrifice of common sense. Mr. Green, on 

 the other hand, is anxious to find " some indepen- 

 dent justification " for ethics " in the shape of a 

 philosophy which does not profess to be a branch 

 either of dogmatic theology or of natural science " 

 (p. 2). And there are still some, and we venture to 

 think an increasing number, who are reactionary 

 enough to hold that there is no basis for the Christian 



