REV. PREBENDARY WACE, D.D., ON ETHICS AND RELIGION. 13] 
perfect it.” With the charming candour which marks these 
confessions of the most distinguished of the professors of 
moral philosophy at our Universities, Professor Sidgwick 
proceeds to say that he is afraid his hearers “ will think ee 
our task, as I conceive it, is like the climbing of 
mountain, of which the peaks are hidden one after Tae 
behind lower peaks ; for when one difficulty is surmounted it 
brings another into view.” We have just seen that the 
business of the moral philosopher is “to free the current 
ideal of what is right from all that is merely traditional; but 
we are also agreed—it is one of our express principles—that 
the good lifeis to be realized by accepting and acting in 
the spirit of such common obligations as are enjoined by the 
relationship of family and society.” But when “ we look closer 
at these common obligations, we find that they are actually 
determined by tradition and custom to so great an extent 
that, if we subtracted the traditional element, it would be 
very difficult to say what the spirit of the obligation was.’ 
That is exactly what a Mahommedan might urge in refus- 
ing, on grounds of mere moral philosophy, to entertain any 
proposal to alter his traditions and customs in the Christian 
direction. Professor Sidgwick himself proceeds to point the 
moral by reference to the subject already urged in this paper 
—that of the family relations. When we turn, he says, “to 
scrutinize our own ideal of family duty, how are we to tell 
how much of it belongs to mere tradition, which the river 
of progress will sweep away, and how much belongs to the 
indestructible conditions of the well-being of life, propagated 
as human life must be propagated.” Is it not an astonishing 
and pathetic spectacle? A professor of moral philosophy, 
whose office it 1s to instruct our young men in the principles 
of morality, and who is invited to give some guidance to a 
London Ethical Society, inquires, in sheer perplexity, how 
he and his audience are to tell how much of our ideal of 
family duty—the first and most pressing duty of all— 
‘belongs to mere tradition, which the river of progress will 
sweep away.” The floodgates of “the river of progress ” 
are thus opened on the very standards of family duty, and 
the Professor stands on the banks, calmly speculating how 
much of the ideals we have inherited from our parents will 
be sweptaway. “Of this difficulty,” he concludes, “ there is, 
I think, no complete solution possible, until our task of con- 
structing a theory or science of right has been satisfactorily 
accomplished ”—accomplished, of cour se, by that mutual 
K 2 
