484 HEREDITY AND SELECTION IN SOCIOLOGY 



discussing the ethics of that school of Protestantism which is 

 farthest removed from orthodoxy, the school represented in 

 Germany by Hamack and Pfleiderer. This school, under the 

 impression that an ethical code based on the idea of an anthro- 

 pomorphic deity is a code built upon a quicksand, has sought 

 to detach ethical laws from their religious basis, and to establish 

 them on a " natural " basis. " But on what is one to found 

 one's sermons of morality ?" asks Hartmann. And he replies : 

 " Evidently the preacher will be reduced to appealing to the 

 moral tendencies and Lnstincts of man. If these are sufl&ciently 

 developed, the appeal will succeed, but it will have been super- 

 fluous ; if they be not sufficiently developed, the moral discourse 

 will be an object of derision and scorn, and it will be very 

 difficidt for the preacher to demonstrate even theoretically to 

 his deriders that they are wrong. For, as a matter of fact, 

 the latter Ukewise appeal to instincts and tendencies of the 

 human heart ; and in order to decide which are to be preferred, 

 whether love or hatred, forgiveness or revenge, self-sacrifice or 

 egoism, are to guide our actions, the preacher has again no other 

 means at his disposal than to appeal to the feelings or to the 

 taste, things which difEer in difierent individuals. Once it is 

 detached from metaphysics, an ethical system remains suspended, 

 as it were, between heaven and earth ; such a system can put 

 forth its decrees, but it is reduced to impotency if the individual 

 does not happen to find these decrees to his taste. Without 

 metaphysics an ethical system is but the natural history of the 

 human tendencies and instructs, considered in their social results. 

 Such a system may claim to be the criterion of human actions ; 

 but it is unable to justify its claim if rebellious egoism demands 

 its title-deeds." 



The philosopher who wrote this was not himself a behever, 

 but a disciple of Schopenhauer. But what Hartmann has very 

 clearly seen is the futihty of the efforts which have been made 

 to establish an ethical system on a " natural " basis. Morality 



