130 kEV. PREBENDARY WACE, D.D., ON ETHICS AND RELIGION. 
they may combine to give, as to the right way of living so 
as best to realize the end, be other than discordant and 
bewildering to those who seek their counsels.” What a 
picture of ‘the state of moral philosophy, apart from the 
authority of revelation, some two thousand five hundred 
years after the rise oe moral speculation in Greece! 
Philosophers in complete disagreement as to the ultimate end 
of human action—so complete that any counsels they might 
combine to give as to the right way of living could not be 
otherwise than discordant and bewildermg to those who 
seek their counsels! And this being the condition of moral 
philosophy after Socrates, and Plato, and Aristotle, and the 
Stoics, and the Schoolmen, and Spinoza, and Butler, and the 
English moralists, and the German philosophers, and. the 
evolutionists of our own day, we are seriously expected to 
believe that morality will be placed on a firmer ground by 
abandoning its basis in authoritative revelation and trusting 
to the simple ethical motive of the attraction of a good life, 
assisted by the speculations of these distracted philosophers | 
Professor Sidgwick, ‘‘in the perplexing choice of alterna- 
tives” which he so candidly confesses, falls back upon the 
comforting fact that “there is much greater agreement 
among thoughtful persons on the question what a good 
life is than on the question why it is good.” When 
philosophers “are trying to define the ultimate end of right 
actions, the conceptions they respectively apply seem to be 
so widely divergent that the utmost efforts of mutual 
criticism are hardly sufficient to enable them even to under- 
stand each other.” But happily “there is no important 
difference of opinion among philosophers as to the details 
and particulars of morality. ” "That is a happy circumstance 
for philosophers. But unhappily, as has been pointed out, 
there are the widest differences among mankind on some of 
these details and particulars, and unless we are to confine 
our interest in moral problems, and in the development of 
morality, to the limits of the best Christian civilization, 
Professor Sidgwick’s consolation will not carry us far. But 
he proceeds most materially to diminish even this degree of 
consolation for us. When philosophers of the most 
diverse schools have combined “on the basis of this 
broad and general agreement with each other,’ what are 
they to undertake? “ i hey may hopefully co-operate in efforts 
. . . to free this current ideal from all that is merely 
traditional and self-contradictory, and thus to widen and 
