2o6 What it can tell Us. 



show what mankind at least has regarded as the 

 essential content of the moral law (and some ex 

 planation might even be suggested of the diver 

 gence in the outlying area beyond this common 

 circle), though we should still be unable to say 

 whether the end of life was pleasure or some 

 thing else, or how this common human morality 

 might be regarded by other spirits, as, for ex 

 ample, by God. For the rich harvest which this 

 treatment of the moral field is sure to yield we 

 shall have to wait until the spirit of science has 

 exorcised the spirit of speculation from our con 

 tending schools of ethics. Only a single plot of 

 the field has as yet been cultivated, and that not 

 by moralists, but by anthropologists, philologists, 

 jurists, historians, and observant travellers. I 

 may mention especially the works of McLennan, 

 Morgan, Tylor, Lubbock, Herbert Spencer, Sir 

 Henry Maine, Robertson Smith, Hearn, Lyall, 

 Letourneau, Coulanges, Schmidt, Floss, and Lip- 

 pert. The investigations which they .have con 

 ducted, within recent years, into the origin and de 

 velopment of the family relations constitute an 

 important chapter in the yet unborn science of 

 historical ethics. 



Among all the virtues, none is more sacred to 

 Christendom than chastity, and none has been. 



