106 Trayis. Acad. Sci. of St. Louis. 



miinden konnten — das ist einer der verbreitetsten Irrthiimer 

 des teleologischeu Denkens." And the other writer, A. E. 

 Taylor, of England, has recently published an extensive work, 

 ** The Problem of Conduct," apparently to establish the same 

 point, according to the assertion: *'A11 moral endeavor is 

 bound to be a business of more or less unprincipled compro- 

 mise," hence that ethics can have no foundation in metaphy- 

 sics but only in empirical psychology. 



II.-III. It is, however, in connection with the second and 

 third classes of problems that the battle royal has been going 

 on in ethical science since the time of Darwin, because it is 

 here where the new historical method has played such an im- 

 portant role. What are the motives or sanctions for the 

 ethical ideal? Is conscience something single and irreducible, 

 an intuition, or is it derived, and is it a name for a complex 

 series of feelings? It is here where, as some may think, the 

 honor of the soul is at stake. 



The influence in this direction has come supremely from 

 the study of anthropology, — the customs and conditions of 

 mind of primitive races, or of people living under a more 

 primitive form of civilization. Then, too, the discovery of 

 ancient literatures, the codes and documents of other races, 

 has come like a revelation or an earthquake shock. If the 

 moral sense is an original endowment, how are we to account 

 for the contradictions we see in the way it announces itself? 



At the same time, it should be remembered that the issue 

 is not Intuitionalism versus Utilitarianism. The scholar who 

 accepts the universal happiness principle as the ultimate 

 aim, may nevertheless believe that there is an original injunc- 

 tion in the human soul commanding each and every one to 

 work for this as an ideal. The great Lotze, for instance, 

 assured us that the one supreme principle of all moral con- 

 duct must be found in the idea of benevolence. But it has 

 very much upset others who accept this standpoint, when he 

 asserts on the other hand : ' * Ein unaustilgbarer Keim des 

 Guten ist dem menschlichen Geist im Gewissen angeboren, — 

 unmittelbar in der Natur unseres Wesens begriindet." Be- 

 sides this there is the evolutional Intuitionalism of Herbert 



