It is the two volumes entitled the “Principles of Ethics” to which we shall lastly invite attention.  The six parts of which this work is composed were published in an irregular manner.  Part I., presenting the data of ethics, was issued in 1879; Part IV., a treatise on “Justice,” in 1891; Parts II. and III., which set forth respectively the inductions of ethics and the ethics of individual life, and which, along with Part I., form the first volume, were issued in 1892; Parts V. and VI., which treat respectively of negative beneficence and positive beneficence, were issued in 1893, and, along with Part IV., constitute the second volume.  With regard to the “Principles of Ethics,” considered as a whole, it should be noted that the author was prompted to prepare the work, notwithstanding the ill health by which he was incessantly interrupted, by the conviction that the establishment of rules of conduct on a scientific basis is a pressing need.  Now that moral injunctions are losing the authority given by their supposed sacred origin, the secularization of morals is becoming imperative.  Those who reject the current creed appear to assume that the controlling agency conferred by it may safely be thrown aside.  On the other hand, those who defend the current creed allege that, in the absence of the guidance it yields, no guidance can exist, divine commandments being, in their opinion, the only possible guides.  Dissenting from both of these beliefs, Mr. Spencer has had for his primary purpose in the two volumes under review to show that, apart from any supposed supernatural basis, the principles of ethics have a natural basis.  In these two volumes this natural basis is set forth, and its corollaries are elaborated.  If the conclusions to which the general law of evolution introduces us are not in all cases as definite as might be wished, yet our author submits that they are more definite than those to which we are introduced by the current creed.  Complete definiteness is not, of course, to be expected.  Right regulation of the actions of so complex a being as man, living under conditions so complex as those presented by a society, evidently forms a subject-matter unlikely to admit of specific statements throughout its entire range.

The principal inductions drawn from the data collected in the first of these volumes may be set forth in a few sentences.  Multitudinous proofs are brought forward of the fact that the ethical sentiment prevailing in different societies, and in the same society under different conditions, are sometimes diametrically opposed.  In Europe and in the United States to have committed a murder disgraces for all time a man’s memory, and disgraces for generations all who are related to him.  By the Pathans, however, a contrary sentiment is displayed.  One who had killed a Mellah (priest) and failed to find refuge from the avengers, said at length:  “I can but be a martyr; I will go and kill a Sahib.”  He was hanged