literary and economic groups, and the essay on Alexis de Tocqueville, which has been printed at the end of the volume as a supplement. This paper was written when the author was twenty-three, and, not being among those specified by him, could hardly find a place among the maturer essays which compose the rest of the book; but it seemed of sufficient interest not to be omitted altogether. With the exception of the two papers on Shakespeare, all those in the volume have been published before-most of them in Reviews and Magazines, The Scope and Method of Economic Science and The Pursuit of Culture as an Ideal separately, and The Theory of a Classical Education in a volume of essays. Thanks are due to Publishers and Editors for their kind consent to republication. ELEANOR MILDRED SIDGWICK. ARTHUR SIDGWICK. CONTENTS 6. BENTHAM AND BENTHAMISM IN POLITICS AND ETHICS (Fortnightly Review, May 1877) 7. THE SCOPE AND METHOD OF ECONOMIC SCIENCE. An 11. THE RELATION OF ETHICS TO SOCIOLOGY (International Journal of Ethics, October 1899) 12. THE THEORY OF CLASSICAL EDUCATION. (From Essays on ERRATA Page 64, line 11 from foot, for "but the term was somewhat indefinite read "but the term is somewhat indefinite." For footnote to page 168, end of first paragraph, see page 374. FEW persons who have read through Ecce Homo will be prepared to deny, whatever faults they may find with its methods and conclusions, that it possesses very remarkable positive merits. As the present article will unavoidably be made up chiefly of censure and criticism, we wish at the outset to give most warm and sincere praise to the originality of the conception, the vigour of its execution, the sympathetic intensity with which the writer has grasped the chief points in the character and work of Jesus, the flowing and fervid eloquence with which he has impressed them on his readers. His conceptions are, of course, partly old, partly new; whatever we may think of the latter element, we willingly admit that he has made us feel the old as if it were new. It requires genius to produce this effect and genius of a certain kind our author possesses. His book will probably have a most beneficial operation, especially among the persons whose impression will be that the author has preached them a series of good sermons, and meanwhile contrived somehow to set Christianity upon a basis impregnable to the assaults of modern criticism and science. 1 Ecce Homo: a Survey of the Life and Works of Jesus Christ. 8vo. 4th edition. London: Macmillan. 1866. [This book, now known to be by J. R. Seeley, was published anonymously, as was this article on it; but Sidgwick and Seeley were friends, and by the time the review was published each was aware of what the other had written, and they had already been in correspondence about the book.—ED.] At the same time the author might fairly complain if we treated his book as belonging to the class which, as a literary cynic has said, tend to edification rather than instruction. It claims to be much more: it is clearly the result of a good deal of general reading and reflection; and eminent and cultivated persons have spoken of it as if it were likely to have a permanent influence on the thought of students. As we have a strong conviction that it is not calculated to produce this effect, it seems desirable that we should support this conviction by a close examination of its principal features. The first thing that will surprise a student who has taken up the book is the total absence of any introductory discussion of the evidence on which the historical portion of the book is intended to be based. Considering that we derive our knowledge of the facts from a limited number of documents, handed down to us from an obscure period, and containing matter which in any other history we should regard as legendary: considering that in consequence these documents have been subjected for many years to an elaborate, minute, and searching investigation: that hundreds of scholars have spent their lives in canvassing such questions as the date of their composition, their authorship, the conscious objects or unconscious tendency of each author, his means of information, and his fidelity to fact, the probability of their being compiled or translated from previous works in whole or part, or of their having undergone revisions since the original publication, the contradictions elicited by careful examination of each or close comparison of them together, the methods of reconciling these contradictions or deciding between conflicting evidence, and many other similar points,-it might seem natural that the author of such a work as this should carefully explain to his readers his plan and principles for settling or avoiding these important preliminary questions. But by a bizarre arrangement of his matter, the author defers all discussion of this subject till he has reached his fifth chapter, entitled "Christ's Credentials." In this chapter he gives us, still fragmentarily and incidentally, his notions of historical criticism; and as |
