140 REV. PREBENDARY WACE, D.D., ON ETHICS AND RELIGION. 
Socrates, and Cicero, havea noble and true ring about them till we 
come to the actual state of conduct as it existed in those days, and 
as Aristophanes, Juvenal and Tacitus depict it. As a matter 
of fact a degradation of conduct was reached in the glorious 
periods of Greece and Rome which no one could imagine from the 
high tone of the philosophers mentioned. 
I venture to say it is not the pure morals and high teachings of 
Sir J. Seeley, Mr. Leslie Stephen and Professor Sidgwick which 
will prevail if the old moorings be unloosed, but a greatly lowered 
general tone in that day when “the laws of comfort” shall be 
“ the laws of conduct.” 
Mr. Davin Howarp, D.L., F.C.S.—I think we must all feel that 
we owe very hearty thanks to Dr. Wace for bringing before us, 
in such clear and eloquent language, thoughts which many of 
us have been striving to express, but have failed to measure so 
clearly or so well as he has done. 
It is a vital point nowadays to make up our mind on what 
basis ethics are to exist, and directly you get from the religious 
basis (I do not say the merely Christian basis) we find that 
there is a hopeless lack of foundation. As far as experience 
goes the conceptions of morality are so linked with religious 
conceptions from the very earliest times that it may be a 
very grave question how far they exist without them. The 
conceptions of the Greek philosophers are derived from their 
religious conceptions. They rose above the religious conceptions 
of their time, but at any rate, they were derived from them, and 
the religious conceptions, such as they are, of the wild savage 
are derived from his religion, and so mixed with it that it is 
impossible, always, to distinguish cause and effect. A merely 
scientific basis for ethics is incompatible with the belief that right 
is grounded in the will of God, and misconception on this point 
is a common cause of delusion. Take the lowest conception 
such as telling the truth. Why do we tell the truth? I 
believe Professor Moseley is right in saying that the conception 
of telling the truth all round is not natural to us, especially 
outside our own family. Then comes the Christian conception 
of one God and Father for all. That truth affords a higher 
conception, and you cannot disentangle the idea of religion 
from morality, and, after all, is not it scientific to connect them 
together? The one aim of science is to find some underlying 
