Note 39 — VIII.

I use the expression "mercantile ethics," which Letourneau used in his book on the Evolution of Ethics (L'évolution de la morale), Paris, 1887. In his scientific study of the facts relating to ethics, Letourneau has distinguished four phases: animal ethics—savage ethics—barbarous ethics—mercantile (or bourgeois) ethics; these phases will be followed by a higher phase of ethics which Malon has called social ethics.