, OF SOCIETY. 441 



destroyed. The older systems of morality started with 

 a command or with what has been termed the form of 

 morality, and followed this up with a simple definition 

 of the substance or essence of morality : the spirit of 

 love. Eecent systems of morality start with a definition 

 of what the essence of morality or the supreme good is 

 — agreeing mainly on this point with the second half 

 of Christian ethics — and then follow this up with an 

 attempt to show how and why the ideal expressed 

 therein assumes the form of a command, and how its 

 realisation becomes a duty. 



We see then how in this movement of thought there 

 is inevitably involved a transition from what we may 

 call the theological and theocratic to the anthropological 

 and democratic point of view. The latter has in recent 

 times received a philosophical name as the sociological. 

 Formerly the centre of gravitv of the ethical system le. 



"^ & . J Centre of 



was the Personal Deity, the Creator, Euler, and Law- gravity of 



"^ ' ' ' the ethical 



giver of the Universe ; latterly, in the naturalistic chaD*^^d. 

 schools of thought, the centre of gravity in the system 

 of morals is Society, some social organisation, let us call 

 it the liberal state. The anchorage used to be a firm 

 belief in the Divine Being, it is now more and more 

 being sought in a belief in humanity. So much have 

 these two ideas changed places that in the later phase 

 of Comte's philosophy Humanity receives the name of the 

 Grand-Etre. In moving from the one to the other pole 

 of thought there is an intermediate stage, an attempt 

 to base the moral system upon the individual human 

 reason, upon an intuition or an axiom. This was practic- 



