60 
THE DATA OF ETHICS. 
Having ascended the highest summit of the mountain range, 
we shall take our bearings, and shall be able to use the 
knowledge in subsequent ascents of the lower peaks or in 
excursions in the valleys. 
That the problems which we are about to approach are 
important will be denied by none ; but perhaps there are 
many who do not realise how transcendently important they 
are at the present stage of thought and belief. It is when 
the storms begin to beat, and the winds to blow, and the 
rains to fall, that it becomes foolish—nay, criminal—to be 
content with the very lordliest pleasure-house built on a 
shifting foundation. There is no time to be lost in looking 
out for a secure site ; otherwise, great may be our fall. On 
this point I must again quote from the preface to the “ Data 
of Ethics”: “ The establishment of rules of right conduct on 
a scientific basis is a pressing need. Now that moral in¬ 
junctions are losing the authority given by their supposed 
sacred origin, the secularisation of morals is becoming 
imperative. Few things can happen more disastrous than 
the decay and death of a regulative system no longer fit, 
before another and fitter regulative system has grown up to 
replace it.” This truth is strikingly illustrated by a passage 
from Ellis’s “ Polynesian Researches,” quoted by Mr. Spencer 
in his work on “ Ecclesiastical Institutions.” It is as follows: 
“ The sacrificing of human victims to the idols had been one 
of the most powerful engines in the hands of the govern¬ 
ment, the requisition for them being always made by the 
ruler. . . . An individual who had shown any marked 
disaffection towards the government, or incurred the dis¬ 
pleasure of the king and chiefs, was usually chosen. The 
people knew this, and therefore rendered the most unhesitat¬ 
ing obedience. Since the subversion of idolatry, this motive 
has ceased to operate, and many, free from the restraint it 
had imposed, seemed to refuse all lawful obedience and right¬ 
ful support.” Well, we are not South Sea savages, and our 
spiritual and temporal chiefs have not kept “ the wretch in 
order” by condemning him to actual immolation at the shrine 
of an offended fetish. Still there have been modes always 
precarious, and now growing obsolete, of keeping the wretch 
who knew how to evade the laws in order, if not in very good 
order ; and it is time to teach him that to be a wretch is bad 
evolutional policy. It is time for all of us to look to the 
basis of our moral creed, and to make sure that while beliefs 
may come and beliefs may go, morality must abide as an 
organic part of human nature. 
