But it is not necessary to limit the inquiry to the question whether moral conceptions are or are not modifications of the desire for pleasure and of aversion to pain. It is true that this is the most generic form which the discussion can take, and is made crucial by some philosophers: hence if we can vindicate the possibility that pleasurable and painful experiences are the efficient, but not the material causes of moral ideas, we have the case proved for all conceivable incidents of human experience. It would seem that the sense of duty and sacrifice, and indeed all altruistic sentiments, were decisive proof of the matter, because so far from being a desire for personal pleasure to the agent, they may and often do mean only pain for him, and no compensation of a so-called higher pleasure appears to take its place. But our problem does not require us to insist upon this view of the case. Suppose we grant that the sense of duty is only a preferred pleasure as compared with any other experience which is possible at the time and which might be either a pain, or a less degree of pleasure. Our general argument will not be altered on this account, because the problem may be directed to the nature of the conduct, which is to be regarded moral, rather than to the reasons for our knowing it to be such. Hence it will only have a different application. While evolution and its method may determine the latter, and how the idea "originated," they will not decide the character of the conduct which depends upon the uniformity of sequence and has its moral value per se before as well as after it is known. The test of its character, therefore, will be an induction into its uniformity as a "law of nature" related to any approved or disapproved end, and not an investigation of the historical causes which produced our knowledge of it. The former is an essential element in the ethical problem, and is not even approached by the method of evolution. Hence we shall insist that evolution is concerned with the efficient causes, subjective and objective, which condition the appearance of a judgment about the value of any given act, or course of conduct, but neither constitute the material character of that idea, nor affect its psychological value by making it a mere contingency of the particular circumstances under which it originated, nor determine the moral nature of the conduct which thus becomes the object of the idea. To

illustrate this we take up the most general moral conceptions at hand: e. g., veracity, respect for person and property, chastity, benevolence, and their opposites, lying, murder, theft, etc.

When and how did they originate? What historical and social circumstances, and what psychological experiences conditioned the recognition of one set as right, and the other as wrong. Evolution may answer these questions by pointing out certain primitive social conditions and certain phenomena of pleasure and pain as the reason for the existence of moral ideas, and it will also show at the same time that they are far from having been always and everywhere recognized. For instance, some races pride themselves in their skill at deception, and never suspect it a wrong. Hence, when any people come to regard it wrong, special causes determine their belief. But had the act no moral character before it was thought to have it? Does its ethical nature depend upon the causes for our knowing it as such? Do those causes either constitute the character of the conduct, or prove the validity of our knowledge regarding it!

On the contrary, the value of the newly discovered course of conduct is derived psychologically from the perception of its relation to an ideal end already existing, it may be pleasure or it may be duty, and not historically from the circumstances which incited the activity of moral functions. Respect for property may have originated in the historical sense from selfinterest; that is, on a certain occasion an individual or a tribe may have found that self-interest made it prudent to respect the rights of property and to condemn theft. But this does not prove that the act has the moral character of selfishness afterward, when it is respected altruistically because of the rights of others: nor does it prove that we ought to abandon it when the motive of self-interest becomes suspected. It is not merely a question of knowledge and motives, nor of their origin," but it is a question of the nature of the act and the validity of our conceptions when they have once appeared. The conformity of an act to our interest is one thing, and the interest may have occasioned our perception of the relation between the act and the end to be realized. But the annunciation of this conduct as a universal moral law, and the enforcement of it as obligatory is another fact which is not involved

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in its historical causes, nor justified by them. Veracity is not a virtue because we discovered it on a certain occasion, nor because it served our interest at a particular time; but because of the right of others to know the truth, and because of its conformity to some ideal end which cannot be realized without it. If this end be a pleasure or an interest instead of anything supposed to be higher, the argument is not altered. For our power to declare it a virtue for all time depends upon its uniform relation to an end, upon its being a law of things, or expressing it, and not upon the contingency of its "origin." Besides also it has its character affected, if not determined, by the rights of others, and so the circumstances of its actual historical genesis will not bespeak its validity as a "universal law." When others have no right to know the truth, as in the case of the robber, the murderer, the sick and the insane, and when it contributes nothing to some other valuable end than itself, it may cease to be a virtue. So with the moral qualities of all other acts and conceptions. They are not derived from our knowing them, indispensable as our knowledge may be for determining the extent of moral responsibility; but from their uniform relation to some approved or disapproved end, a relation that is not determined by the historical origin of our knowledge concerning them, but by the method which determines the validity of any scientific conception; namely, induction and experience, if we are empiricists; or rational and moral insight interpreting experience, if we are transcendentalists. The validity of our belief about wages, about the nature and use of money, about the right to vote, about the evil of intemperance, about the value of courage, etc., does not depend upon our knowing how it "originated," but upon our knowing the relations of these objects of belief in the nature of things. Evolution can only furnish the former and it is absolutely silent on the latter. As a matter of fact we may be entirely ignorant of the historical origin of our beliefs in the investigation and determination of their validity whose method has to be assumed and applied before any valid conclusion can be reached in regard to the question of genesis. The validity of all truth cannot be held in suspense and abeyance until its origin has been determined; for in that case we

could come to no certain conclusion about its origin. Now it is with the character of conduct and of moral conceptions for us at present and in all civilized states with which ethics is principally occupied, and only in a subordinate way with the question of genesis. Evolution by its own pretensions is concerned with the latter problem, and when it is successful in ascertaining the conditions under which a given moral idea primitively appeared it does not and cannot on that account pronounce upon its imperative character for us. We must ascertain in addition whether it has universal application. The method for deciding this will be the same as that by which we endeavor to show slavery to be wrong, and not that by which we show when and how it first came to be practiced. It is the method of determining its present relation to a recognized moral end and its binding character upon all rational beings.

J. H. HYSLOP.

UNIVERSITY TOPICS.

CLASSICAL AND PHILOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF YALE UNIVERSITY.

March 6, 1888, Mr. J. E. Whitney presented a paper on a RECENTLY RECOVERED ALLEGORY IN THE FIRST BOOK OF THE FAERIE QUEENE.

In 1521 Pope Leo X. rewarded Henry VIII. for his able defence of the Roman Catholic Church by conferring upon him the title of Defender of the Faith, and all Christians were commanded to address him by this title. A dozen years later Henry VIII. had become the enemy of the Romanish church and the champion and defender of the Protestant faith. The title of Defender of the Faith as it was variously understood by papist and protestant seems to have furnished Spenser with material for an allegory which runs through each adventure of the Red Cross Knight in the first book of the Faërie Queene, and is carried out with considerable detail. Its main points are about as follows: The R. C. K. is identified with St. George of England, representing the nation or its line of sovereigns. His shield of faith is emphasized particularly in the first fourteen lines of the poem, and in each of his several combats its symbolic use is noticeable. From the first, the R. C. K. is a champion of Una or truth, but Una is veiled: So at first England saw the cause of truth in the church of Rome only. After the tempest of the Reformation has driven the R. C. K. and Una into the wood of error, where all Christians were for a time, Archimago, or papal intrigue, persuades the R. C. K. to believe in the utter foulness of Una or the reformed faith and he deserts her. After this, the defender of faith conquers Sans-foy or the defender of faithlessness, and in all sincerity of purpose he becomes the champion of Fidessa, not knowing that she is Duessa, or the false faith of the Romish Church. Each adventure thereafter is a new trial of the Knight's faith. It is not until he is strengthened by Fidelia that he is fitted to fulfill his mission.