Methods of Ethics. 23 



adopted by the evolutionists. Eschewing every at 

 tempt to deduce moral rules for the guidance of 

 conduct, they institute an inquiry into the origin 

 of that morality by which human life is actually 

 regulated. It is not their business to tell men how 

 they should act, or to supply them with motives for 

 originating or principles for regulating their be 

 havior, still less to mete out esteem and affec 

 tion or hatred and contempt upon what may be 

 considered the estimable or the blameable quali 

 ties of men. On the contrary, their aim is 

 purely theoretical. They seek only the genesis of 

 those moral notions, beliefs, and practices, which 

 constitute an obvious phenomenon of the life 

 of man. As there is an anatomy of the body, 

 which resolves limbs into tissues and tissues 

 into cells, and a physiology, that represents the 

 modes in which the functions of the body are per 

 formed, so there may be a physiology and anat 

 omy of conscience, to inquire into its operations, 

 to dissect complex moral phenomena into simple 

 elements, and finally, under the guidance of 

 evolution, to track these elements to their last 

 hiding-place in the physical constitution and en 

 vironment of the lower animals. The natural 

 history of moral phenomena may still be unwrit 

 ten ; but if it be true, as logicians tell us, that 



