94 Trans. Acad. Sci. of St. Louis. 



history of ethics at all. Such writers in the last thirty or 

 forty years have exerted an enormous influence, both on eth- 

 ical theories as well as ethical ideals. Poetry, the novel, the 

 essay, the drama, must all be concerned with the ethical 

 problem if they give us true works of art. 



In my private library, for example, I have roughly divided 

 my books into five sections: 1. History, Economics and the 

 Social Sciences. 2. Philosophy, Psychology and Metaphysics. 

 3. The Natural Sciences. 4. Ethics, Eeligion, and Biblical 

 Criticism. 5. Art and Literature. — And it may so happen 

 that any morning when at work on some one ethical problem, 

 I find myself turning to all five of these sections, and have 

 books from every one of them lying before me on my table. 



But if you will look over this list before you, certain inter- 

 esting facts will be apparent at a glance. In the first place 

 you will see at once how rapidly the treatises have been in- 

 creasing in number during the last fifteen years. In the sec- 

 ond place you will notice that the majority of the leading 

 works come from the two great countries, England and Ger- 

 many, although latterly America has been rapidly catching up, 

 so far as number of books is concerned. Why it is that we do 

 not have more literature on this subject from France I do not 

 quite understand. It may be that many other treatises on eth- 

 ics have appeared in that country ; but if so one does not hear 

 about them. My inference is that the work in this direction 

 on the part of the scholars there, has been interwoven more 

 particularly with their researches in psychology, anthro- 

 pology, or the social sciences. But you will see that there is 

 one treatise with a strikingly significant title from that 

 country, as indicative of a bold tendency: " Esquisse 

 d'une Morale sans Obligation ni Sanction," by M. Guyau. 

 Janet and Fouillee have alsQ done notable work in ethics in 

 France. In the third place you will observe at once that 

 the lead was taken by England. Glancing over the list we 

 see four or five of the greatest works in ethics of modern 

 times already issued in that country, such as *' The Methods 

 of Ethics," by Sidgwick; Spencer's " Principles of Ethics;" 

 ''The Science of Ethics," by Sir Leslie Stephen; "The 



