6o HUXLEY MEMORIAL LECTURES 



the way of rational ethics or of science. The 

 ethical way is to make appeal to some principle 

 generally accepted in the society, rights generally 

 recognized, beliefs which are not seriously ques- 

 tioned. It has to be shewn that the proposed 

 change is in accord with or contrary to these, so 

 that consistency would compel us in the one case 

 to accept, in the other to reject it. The way of 

 science is to shew the results which follow the 

 adoption of the disputed principle, results either 

 good or bad, either attracting us towards it, or 

 warning us to avoid it, as we avoid disease and 

 death. 



But abstract talk like this tends to make the 

 ears dull, so that the speaker does not take his 

 audience with him. Rather let us take a con- 

 crete case, in order that we may see the two 

 methods of which I am speaking not as mere pos- 

 sibilities but as actually working principles. We 

 will take up a controversy now practically ex- 

 tinguished, but raging with great force in the last 

 century, the controversy which ended in the 

 abolition of negro slavery in the British Colonies 

 and in America. 



Here the ultimate spring was no doubt an 

 impulse springing up in the consciences of thou- 

 sands a conviction of the sinfulness of slavery. 

 When the matter had to be argued on the plat- 

 form and in the legislatures, the impulse had to 

 be put on terms with men's ordinary ways of 

 thinking and action. The advocates of emanci- 



