Lovers of good reading will find a treat in Martineau's "Types of Ethical Theory." Setting down naught in malice, a spirit of fairness and justice pervades the whole work. In its sifting the chaff from the wheat, it assigns to Evolution its proper place, viz., a theory, and one which has utterly failed in all attempts to produce the moral from the immoral. The able writer in the Unitarian Review, in criticising the work, makes the following statement: "The subtratum and essence of all being lies in the ' One mind,'—it is in the study of the laws of mind that we get the only explanation of the laws of matter. The universe is the expression of the One Mind; it is the expression of one infinitely complex but perfectly harmonious and simple thought." We note this author's use of capitals, and hope the time is near when the word Mind will be recognized as synonymous with God, and one as incapable of a plural as the other. We quote the following definition of right and wrong, which is at once so simple a child might comprehend it, and yet in itself is masterful: "Every action is right which, in the presence of a lower principle, follows a higher: every action is wrong, which in the presence of a higher principle follows a lower: for instance: The thirsty traveller in the desert would seize at once, instinctively, without thought, the draught from the spring which he has found at last; but he knows, if he have a fainting companion, that his appetite must give precedence to his compassion, and he holds the cup first to another's lips." Here is another helpful sentence: "Good is something which we may have. Goodness indicates something that we may be: an attribute, not an adjunct, of ourselves. The former is relative exclusively to our own wants, and would remain a lonely organism; the latter is prevailingly measured by the wants of others, which our nature is fitted to supply."
What criterion do we need beyond this? One more extract, and we close the book reluctantly: "Virtue is harmony won: merit is the winning of it. The former is a ratified peace: the latter the conflict whence it results." Martinean borrows this latter quotation from Shaftesbury; but so ably does he use it, it becomes almost his own. Such gems as these mentioned, hold the thought and feast the earnest reader, through the entire volume.
