Sheldon — The Literature of Ethical Science. 97 



history of ethics that does not include an examination of the 

 three great tragedy writers of ancient Greece, — Aeschylus, 

 Sophocles and Euripides, would strike me as painfully defec- 

 tive or inadequate. The work of Lecky, however, published 

 in the '60's on '* The History of European Morals" is a 

 masterpiece of its kind for the one special period it covers. 

 It is a profound misfortune that the other periods have not 

 been worked out in the same way by other writers. It 

 should be said, however, that there are some works in 

 German by such men as Koestlin, Schmidt, Luthardt and 

 Ziegler, which the writer has not been able to examine. 



But, most of all, you will ask me, I assume, what in sum and 

 substance is to be regarded as the new outcome of all this 

 literature? What are the new tendencies? I should answer 

 in the first place from the negative side, that an immense 

 result has been accomplished by doing away with one mistaken 

 theory which has been a stumbling block to ethical science or 

 ethical philosophy for hundreds of years : — the theory which 

 treated conscience as if it were a kind of an organ of the 

 mind, just as the heart or the stomach may be an organ of 

 the body. This belonged to the old psychology and held on 

 most tenaciously from the religious side. Even where it was 

 doubted, men did not have the right weapons with which to 

 overthrow this illusion. It could not be done away with until 

 the larger science of psychology also went through a trans- 

 formation. The general doctrine of evolution did the work. 

 One smiles now at thinking of an organ hidden away in the 

 soul, pumping out ethical judgments somewhat in the same 

 way as the heart pumps the blood through the body. But 

 it may have been no smiling matter to deal with this theory 

 fifty or one hundred years ago. 



On the whole I should say that as a result of this whole 

 doctrine of evolution, it is now pretty generally accepted by 

 writers or students in ethical science that conscience is simply 

 a phase of the functioning of the soul or of consciousness, and 

 no more. In a word, we know now a little more definitely 

 what our problem is ; and this means a long step forward, I 

 can assure you. 



