86 THE CREED OF SCIENCE, RELIGIOUS AND MORAL. 



eighteenth century have left to us, considering the im- 

 perfect state of contemporary science, is wonderful indeed, 

 and would appear still more wonderful if we did not 

 remember that they had the ancient ethics to draw upon 

 the ethics of Aristotle and Plato, the systems of the 

 Stoics and the Epicureans ; and if we did not reflect that, 

 conduct being at all times a necessity for man, some 

 recognized rules of conduct, if not scientific theories, must 

 have at all times existed, whether expressed in current 

 maxims, or drawn from sacred books, or embodied in laws 

 which guarded the general interests of society. 



Our past moralists have left us a series of systems of 

 conduct, each one containing some special or important 

 truth overlooked by the others, the later generally em- 

 bodying the unquestioned truths of the earlier, and being, 

 generally speaking, less open to objection ; but never- 

 theless, none of the systems, nor yet all together, contain 

 the whole truth nor the fundamental truth, either on the 

 subject of morality or the final ground of our obligation 

 to its practice. From none of them could we obtain a 

 code of ethics suitable for our guidance ; for besides that 

 the writers are often at variance with themselves within 

 the limits of their single systems, the systems are wholly 

 opposed to each other with regard to moral obligation, 

 even with regard to the reality of virtue whenever we 

 pass beyond the very elementary virtues which society 

 insists upon as a condition of its own existence. In short, 

 of the many theories of morality and of moral obligation 

 that have been produced in the past, none of them are 

 quite satisfactory to us to-day ; and their rules are of 

 little service to us in the way of guidance in critical, or 

 conflicting, or delicate cases of conduct. 



2. The masters of morals in the past failed to con- 

 struct abiding systems because they had an imperfect 



