PROLEGOMENA TO ETHICS. 127 



never stronger now than it may have been in an Israelite 

 who would have yet recognized no claim in a Philistine, or 

 in a Greek who would yet have seen no harm in exposing a 

 sickly child but in the conceived range of claims to which 

 the duty is relative. ... It is not the sense of duty to a 

 neighbour, but the practical answer to the question, Who is 

 my neighbour? that has varied" (p. 220). 



The modern world has accepted, if it has only in 

 part realized, the idea of human equality, an idea 

 which for Greek ethics was simply unintelligible. 

 Even for Aristotle the slave was a living tool, and 

 it was as absurd to suppose him capable of true 

 ivSat/uov'ia as to admit him to political rights. 

 Nowadays people Christian, non-Christian, or 

 anti-Christian accept the equality of all men as, 

 in theory at least, a self-evident truth. "For 

 practical purposes" as Professor Green notices with 

 considerable emphasis on the limitation, the Kan- 

 tian maxim, " Act so as to treat humanity always 

 as an end never as a means," and the Utilitarian 

 formula, " Every one should count for one and no 

 one for more than one," are coincident. Professor 

 Green, however, declines to say who is mainly to 

 be credited with the promulgation of humanitarian 

 views unknown to the Greek world : 



"It is not to the point," he says, "to discuss the share 

 which Stoic philosophers, Roman jurists, and Christian 

 teachers may severally have had in gaining acceptance for 

 the idea of human equality" (p. 222). 



He prefers to think of it as but the natural fulfil- 



