96 Trans. Acad. Sci. of St. Louis. 



achievements may be regarded more as tendencies of thought 

 than as accepted or well-defined principles. But even this 

 would be a great deal. As I have asserted, many of these 

 writers are thinkers of the first rank. Some of them have 

 arisen through the natural sciences, and may have done 

 first grade work there before they passed over to the depart- 

 ment of ethics. Men like Wundt and Lotze began as students 

 of medical science, and had a thorough foundation in that 

 direction before they passed on to work along other lines. 

 And in equipment I think that this would also apply to such 

 workers as Sir Leslie Stephen and Herbert Spencer. 



So far as the history of ethics is concerned, the work in 

 this direction, to my mind, has as yet been rather unsatisfac- 

 tory. It is a period when we should have expected the very 

 best material of this nature. But the trouble has been from 

 the specializing tendency. The man who could do this satis- 

 factorily would need to be some one who was acquainted 

 not only with the history of philosophy or of ethical theories, 

 but had a wide grasp over the arts or literature for the last 

 two thousand years or more. There is the little treatise, 

 ** History of Ethics," of 274 pages, by Sidgwick. Prof. 

 Jodl, of Vienna, has written two volumes, " History of Ethics 

 in Modern Times." The treatise, '< Mental and Moral 

 Science," by Alexander Bain, devotes three hundred pages to 

 a history of ethical systems. Of the five hundred and sev- 

 enty-seven compact pages in the work by Wundt about one 

 hundred and forty are devoted to sketching ' ' Die philosoph- 

 ischen Moralsysteme." Paulsen has about one hundred and 

 fifty pages, but under a much more satisfactory title: *« Um- 

 riss einer Geschichte der Lebensanschauung und Moralphi- 

 losophie." 



Of course there is a great deal of material in all this, but 

 on the whole it is rather disappointing in comparison with 

 the rest of the work by such writers, with the possible ex- 

 ception of the chapters by Paulsen. The trouble with most 

 of them is that they only give a history of ethical theories 

 or systems. But of the ethical ideals in the great departments 

 of art, literature and religion, we do not get enough. A 



