It is inevitable for such an account to be controversial: otherwise it
could not give a true picture of contemporary opinion. Intellectual
and social causes have conspired to accentuate traditional differences
in ethics, and to make the questions in dispute penetrate to the very
heart of morality. It has been my aim to trace the new influences
which are at work, and to estimate the value of the ethical doctrines
to which they have seemed to lead. The estimate has taken the form of
a criticism, but the criticism is in the interests of construction.
W.R. SORLEY.
CAMBRIDGE, 7th March, 1904.
CONTENTS.
I. CHARACTERISTICS
II. ETHICS AND EVOLUTION
III. ETHICS AND IDEALISM
INDEX
I.
CHARACTERISTICS.
A survey of ethical thought, especially English ethical thought,
during the last century would have to lay stress upon one
characteristic feature. It was limited in range,--limited, one may
say, by its regard for the importance of the facts with which it
had to deal. The thought of the period was certainly not without
controversy; it was indeed controversial almost to a fault. But
the controversies of the time centred almost exclusively round two
questions: the question of the origin of moral ideas, and the question
of the criterion of moral value. These questions were of course
traditional in the schools of philosophy; and for more than a century
English moralists were mainly occupied with inherited topics of
debate.
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