elligible, if
they were considered with more direct reference to practice. This little
book will, I trust, furnish an example, however slight and imperfect, of
such a mode of treatment.

C.C.C.

_July_ 25, 1884.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.

Introduction. The Sanctions of Conduct.

CHAPTER II.

The Moral Sanction or Moral Sentiment. Its
Functions and the Justification of its claims
to Superiority.

CHAPTER III.

Analysis and Formation of the Moral Sentiment.
Its Education and Improvement.

CHAPTER IV.

The Moral Test and its Justification.

CHAPTER V.

Examples of the Practical Application of the Moral
Test to existing Morality.

PROGRESSIVE MORALITY.

* * * * *

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTION. THE SANCTIONS OF CONDUCT.

All reflecting men acknowledge that both the theory and the practice of
morality have advanced with the general advance in the intelligence and
civilisation of the human race. But, if this be so, morality must be a
matter capable of being reasoned about, a subject of investigation and
of teaching, in which the less intelligent members of a community have
always something to learn from the more intelligent, and the more
intelligent, in their turn, have ever fresh problems to solve and new
material to study. It becomes, then, of prime importance to every
educated man, to ask what are the data of Ethics, what is the method by
which its general principles are investigated, what are the
considerations which the moralist ought to apply to the solution of the
complex difficulties of life and action. And still, in spite of these
obvious facts, ethical investigation, or any approach to an independent
review of the current morality, is always unpopular with the great mass
of mankind. Though the conduct of their own lives is the subject which
most concerns men, it is that in which they are least patient of
speculation. Nothing is so wounding to the self-complacency of a man of
indolent habits of mind as to call in question any of the moral
principles on which he habitually acts. Praise and blame are usually
apportioned, even by educated men, according to vague and general rules,
with little or no regard to the individual circumstances of the case.
And of all innovators, the innovator on ethical theory is apt to be the
most unpopular and to be the least able to secure impartial attention to
his speculations. And hence it is that vague theories,