A Review of the Systems of Ethics Founded on the Theory of Evolution Part 34

But the most of the objections to Evolutional Ethics are not on such score as this. A while ago, the conservatives in Ethics declared that the theory of Evolution, even if true, had nothing to do with morals, which occupied a region far above the plane of science. Now, the most of the conservative schools content themselves with merely a.s.serting that evolution may be true even in application to Ethics, but that it is useless in this province, since it adds nothing of value to theory or practice. It may be well to examine into this a.s.sertion. _A priori_, we could scarcely suppose that increased knowledge in any branch could fail to be of importance to that branch and to affect it in some manner.

Knowledge is power, and we should presume not less so in Ethics than in any other science.

The a.s.sertion that Evolution adds nothing to theory would indeed be as just with regard to other sciences as with regard to Ethics; or, rather, it would be more just with regard to the natural sciences. For they at least recognized, before the appearance of the theory of Evolution, the element of constancy ordinarily called law, and attempted to formulate this constancy as a basis of thought and action. To these concepts of constancy and the predictions founded upon them, the theory of Evolution merely added greater certainty and a more extended range, supplying the bond of union between various branches, and showing the inner relation of many before disconnected theories; its whole force was one of clarification. But the work of Evolution for Ethics, though of a similar nature, has been of even greater degree and significance; it has unified and clarified the attempts made to discover a basis for moral principles and has rendered that foundation for the first time secure; it has cleared away, with one sweep, the rubbish of ancient superst.i.tion, made exact methods possible, and raised Ethics to the plane of a Science. If it had added anything absolutely new and entirely unconnected with previous theory, it would be as unintelligible to us as Calculus to a Fiji-Islander; if it had no intimate and vital connection with foregoing ideas, it would meet with no comprehension or acceptance. Science, too, is an evolution, not a creation. The value of the theory of Evolution lies in the very fact that it is simply an addition, though a large one, to previous thought, a higher phase of conception which rises naturally out of the old. But the cavillers say on the one hand: "It teaches a theory of conscience as instinct, therefore we may still cling to the old and unaltered doctrine of the veiled and sacred 'mystery of Feeling'"; and on the other hand: "We already accepted a basis of reason and Utility, therefore our theory, not being overthrown, needs no alteration." Both schools forget that, in science as elsewhere, the new develops from the old, but evolution brings with it, nevertheless, a difference of degree that finally issues in difference of kind. It has been said even by one belonging to the advanced school of Ethics, that, if the course of Evolution could be shown to prescribe immoral conduct, the duty of the moral man would be to oppose evolution even if he perished in the attempt. The conception which lies at the basis of this a.s.sertion is as erroneous as that which a.s.serts that man must go forward on the path taken by evolution whether he will or no.[266] To suppose the will of society opposing the course of Evolution is to suppose a self-contradiction. Nature and man's will are not two different things in this process; man _is_ the part of nature which is involved in the evolution considered. Our prediction of the direction of social development is a prediction of his will; he _will_ will in certain ways constant in the broad sense in which all nature is constant, constant as character and reason are constant. The individual has a.s.suredly the power to oppose himself to all other individuals, if he so wills; and his influence will not be lost; _but it is exactly this willing and the mutual influence of individuals upon each other which the theory of Evolution, as applied to Ethics, endeavors to take into account_. The result in prediction cannot be properly likened, as it is likened by Stephen,[267] to the inference of the future of an organic whole from its present parts. It does not define the progress in society as a whole from a study of the individual; it is, on the contrary, an inference of the future of the whole from its past and present considered in the light of general natural laws, and is as legitimate as the computation of the future position of heavenly bodies from their observed past movements and present position; though we can doubtless make only general predictions from general observations. Or, if we approach the question from another side, we may say that the science of Ethics endeavors to ascertain the ideal by which the welfare of all may be attained, and that the solution of this problem cannot be given otherwise than through rules for the attainment of the general health in the broadest sense of the word; for this corresponds to a final harmony of desires through survival of the fittest.

The power of prediction is, thus, evidently not to be interpreted as if the evolution of morality would go on except through the human will, and through this will in individuals. In any a.s.sertion to the contrary, the same old contradictory division is a.s.sumed, of nature as active opposed to nature as pa.s.sive; man is first regarded as a part of nature and then again as outside nature and compelled by it. We divide him into two parts: the one necessarily coincident with the nature in himself, the other antagonistic to it; the one absolutely pa.s.sive, the other active; and yet these two are the same, and we regard them as the same from other points of view. Nor does prediction impose any "laws" upon the will from without; it is simply inference from the observed relations in the action of individuals: it does not create or alter those relations.

It reckons, not from man as compelled by "Necessity," but from man as possessing will and acting from reason. If man is reasonable, he will perceive that it is for the good of himself as well as for that of the rest of his race to attain a state of harmony; as he is reasonable, he will perceive that social progress is for his benefit as well as for that of others. The increasing solidarity of society continually rendering progress desirable, and the line of the fittest, that is, of those who will in a manner that best fits them for social conditions, continually tending to coincidence with the line of moral progress, the final triumph of the moral is a.s.sured. It is not in any way denied that man chooses this course of advancement. On the contrary, wherever we begin in our a.n.a.lysis, we come round finally to the variation of reason, emotion, and will.

As above noticed, the false interpretation of the significance of Evolutional Ethics on the subject of man's will in relation to progress sometimes gives rise to the opposite erroneous impression to that just noticed, to the impression, namely, that progress will go on whether men strive for it or not, and that it is of no particular consequence what the individual does, or at least that Evolutional Ethics can furnish nothing but statistics and predictions, never motives to right-doing.

This confusion has caused much self-contradiction, has given rise to the most of the discussion on the subject of Absolute and Relative Ethics, and has impelled certain authors to close their books with something very like a half doubt of the efficacy of their own method except as one of observation. But the value of Evolutional Ethics lies not only in the fact that it goes deeper than any other system and a.n.a.lyzes more clearly the ground of moral conduct,--thus removing doubt with those who are open to conviction, and furnishing a less fallible criterion to those who desire to perceive where right lies in order to perform it,--but in that it also renders obvious the fact that conduct opposed to the welfare of society becomes, with time, more and more disadvantageous.

The individual may escape punishment for his misdeeds: but the chances against him are greater, the greater these misdeeds and the longer they are persisted in; it is the "average of the line of moral progress" that is favored by natural selection. A system of Ethics is a part of the environment which acts on the individual; its force is no more lost than is that of any other part of the environment, although the result in the particular case will depend, also, on the character of the individual appealed to. But if Evolutional Ethics cannot bring any such force to bear on the individual as will change his character in an instant, rendering him apt and ready to act according to the ideal, whatever may have been his previous character, there is neither any other system of Ethics which can do this, and there has seldom been one so sanguine as to hope to do it. Theological Ethics, or rather, Theology, has a.s.serted the possibility of such instant transformation, and the doctrine of Socrates that the knowledge of right will secure its performance is a much less extreme instance of a similar idea. But Evolutional Ethics, while rendering manifest the necessity of unceasing endeavor, affords us encouragement by its a.s.surance of the possibility of progress, and its demonstration of the fact that the force of endeavor can no more be lost than any other force. It adds dignity to the smallest acts, and lends earnestness and worth to life. It neither contains any excuses for inaction nor leaves any reason open to pessimism except a selfish one; to the man to whom his own selfish gratification is all in all, the knowledge of social evolution is not a matter of encouragement and rejoicing; but to the lover of his kind it must be. Evolutional Ethics admonishes us to labor, yet teaches us the necessity of patience, since, however the individual will, nothing arises all at once, and the evolution of morals in society as a whole must, like all other evolutions, be a gradual, because a many-sided one. It admonishes us, too,--and this is well,--that we cannot sin without leaving ineffaceable stains upon our own character. The past is never dead, either in its results outside ourselves or in our habit; and it is not the drunkard only who one day awakens to find himself irrevocably moulded, by steps of habit so slight as to have been almost imperceptible, to that which he once loathed and detested. "Our deeds are like children that are born to us; they live and act apart from our own will. Nay, children may be strangled, but deeds never; they have an indestructible life both in and out of our consciousness."[268] We may not be a mere spectator of the struggle for existence even if we will; the dead weight of inaction is itself a force opposed to other force. w.i.l.l.y, nilly, so long as we live we must bear the responsibility of taking a part for or against the progress and welfare of the world.

But there is, as I have said, a system which a.s.serts the possibility of instant entire change of character, as well as of the forgiveness and obliteration of past sins. What manner of obliteration is this? Not the obliteration of the consequences of the acts, since that is impossible, but an obliteration of responsibility for them such that the doer may erase them from his conscience. The innocent on whom the evil results fall are, then, according to this view, the only ones who shall suffer for them. The doctrine of the Atonement takes away that sense of personal responsibility which is most essential to morality, and this removal of responsibility explains the ease with which Christians of all ages have combined a fervid religiosity with vice and crime. Christian theories of morals of the present day forbid the issue of indulgences; but the consciousness that full and free forgiveness is always waiting to receive the offender whenever he gets ready to repent, even if it is not until his death-bed, is most pernicious in its results. So we learn, for instance, that the "Mollie Maguires," a league formed in the mines of Pennsylvania a few years ago, for the express purpose of murder by cooperation, were in the habit of opening their meetings with prayer, and of withdrawing regularly from the society, for one quarter of the year, to attend church, in order then to murder with an easy conscience for the other three quarters. The senior member of Conan Doyle's "Firm of Girdlestone" is no mere fiction of the imagination. I have no desire to join with those who p.r.o.nounce all Christians, or everything in Christian doctrine, morally unsound; I only maintain that the doctrine of the Atonement is in itself pernicious, and is shown to be so by its easy reconciliation with evil action.

Theological Ethics is defective in other respects also. A system which represents G.o.d as accomplishing his own will in the world in "mysterious ways," to question which is sacrilege, has necessarily led to the excusing of much evil as punishment or discipline, and so to inaction against it. "Men can do so little themselves to make the world better,"

said a fervent Christian to me not long since; "we must leave these things to G.o.d." So, poverty has been held to be a mysterious dispensation of Providence which it was not necessary to do away with even if its abolishment were possible, but the slight alleviation of which was counted among the means of atonement for other sin. Thus it has been in other ways than in itself a curse to mankind, furnishing a sort of indulgence for the immoralities of the rich. Poverty has even been represented as a blessing, since it was to be compensated with double joy in the hereafter. The Christian, pointing the miserable and starving to Heaven as a recompense for pain, experienced, without largely inconveniencing himself, a sense of his own piety and desert, and exerting himself to no radical cure but only to a meagre dole of charity, shifted all responsibility of the cure or its omission, by prayer, to G.o.d. So Salter is led to exclaim: "If we must pray, let us pray to men; for there all the trouble lies. Could you, O churches, but open the hearts of your worshippers as you seek to move the heart of G.o.d, the need for all other prayer would soon be gone."[269]

Again, Theology has continually taught that man's first duty was to save his own soul from h.e.l.l, and in this doctrine, ideas of repentance and redemption, faith and worship, have played a larger part than "mere morality." The tendency has, therefore, been towards an "other-worldliness," an egoism of the Hereafter, rather than a fulfilment of the commandment of love. Faith has been exalted above love of Truth, and blind obedience above reasoning morality. Thus it was that Christians entered, with such zeal, into the persecution of heretics.

Had the commandment of justice: "do unto others as ye would that they should do unto you," been followed, the Inquisition could never have taken place. But Christians forget, when they point to this commandment in evidence of the superiority of Christian Ethics, that it is not the only command or doctrine that the Bible contains. Nor is this conception of love to others, which Christians have continually cited as testimony of the divine origin of their religion, confined to Christianity or even original with it. Many other religions contain it. The Buddhist religion enjoins towards all creatures such love as that with which a mother "watches over her own child, her only child."

It is true that the majority of the objectionable points of Christian Ethics are found in the Old Testament. This testament is, however, accepted as the exponent of divine truth, though the authority it now possesses is slight in comparison with that which it formerly held. Yet Christ himself says: "Think not I am come to destroy the Law (_i.e._, the Pentateuch),[270] or the Prophets, I come not to destroy, but to fulfil. For, verily, I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pa.s.s, one jot or one t.i.ttle shall in no wise pa.s.s from the Law till all be fulfilled.

Whosoever, therefore, shall break one of these least commandments and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven; but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven." Repeatedly, Christ shows himself a strict conformant to the Jewish code. But if we examine the Pentateuch, the Jewish Law, we shall easily find on what grounds the burning of heretics and witches, and all the other cruelties of the Middle Ages were committed in the name of Christianity. Lubbock writes, for instance:[271] "Among the Jews, we find a system of animal sacrifice on a great scale, and symbols of human sacrifice which can, I think, only be understood on the hypothesis that the latter were once usual. The case of Jephthah's daughter is generally looked upon as exceptional; but the twenty-eighth and twenty-ninth verses of the twenty-seventh chapter of Leviticus appear to indicate that human sacrifices were at one time habitual, among the Jews." See also 2 Sam. xxi. 1, 5-9, 14. In Lev. xx.

27; Ex. xxii. 18, the stoning of witches is commanded. In Ex. xxii. 20; Deut. xiii. 1-5, 6-10, 14, 15; xvii. 1-5; xviii. 20, it was commanded that men be put to death for idolatry or heresy or for "dreaming dreams"

in the service of another G.o.d, and that idolatrous cities should be utterly destroyed even to the cattle within them. Superst.i.tion and insanity must have fared ill among the Jews. Ex. x.x.xi. 14, 15; x.x.xv. 2, 3; sentence of death is p.r.o.nounced on any who shall perform even so much labor as the kindling of a fire on the Sabbath; and Num. xv. 32-36, describe how a man was put to death, by G.o.d's command to Moses, for gathering sticks on that day. Death was also commanded for murmuring and for all sorts of ceremonial offences; see, for instance, Ex. xii. 15, 19; x.x.x. 33-38; Lev. vii. 20-27; xvii. 8-10, 13-16; xix. 5-8; xxiii. 29, 30; xxiv. 10-16, 23; Num. i. 51; iii. 10, 38; iv. 15, 18-20; xi. 1; xvii. 13; xviii. 3, 7, 22; see also especially Deut. xxviii. 15-68; x.x.xii. 22-42. Command of subjection to the priesthood on pain of death is found in Deut. xvii. 8-12, and examples of fearful punishment for protest against its supremacy are given in Num. xvi. 3-15, 20, 21, 26-35, 41-47, 49. It may be noticed, that here the children are represented as perishing with the parents by G.o.d's express command and miracle. Many instances of the stoning and putting to death of whole families for the sins of some member or members of the family are recorded in the Old Testament, and prove that the expression "visiting the sins of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children's children, unto the third and to the fourth generation," is not to be interpreted as a mere reference to heredity, as many have endeavored to prove it to be. See on this point Is. xiv. 21; also Ps. cix. 7-20; cx.x.xvii. 9. The origin of ordeals may be traced to Num. v. 11-31.

The Old Testament also sanctions slavery, and makes no protest against the selling of children into slavery; see Ex. xxi. 2-6, 7; Lev. xxv.

44-47; although the Israelites were to treat slaves and servants of their own nation with much greater kindness than that used towards those of other nations. Ex. xxi. 20, 21, prescribes that a man shall not be punished for beating his servant to death, provided the servant does not die directly under his hand, but linger a day or two; "for he is his money." Christians have often protested that their religion cannot be held responsible for the sins of the prophets,--for David's murder of Uriah in order to obtain the wife with whom he had already committed adultery; for his torture of the Ammonites with saws and axes and harrows and fire, and his houghing of the horses of a thousand Moabitish chariots; for Solomon's concubinage and his slaughter of Joab according to David's last orders; for Elijah's wholesale slaughter of the priests of Baal; or for the thousand other vices, crimes, and atrocities described in the Old Testament as committed by G.o.d's chosen men, generally without punishment or protest from him. However, the case is not so easily dismissed when we find just as great cruelties and atrocities directly ascribed to G.o.d's express command or miraculous interposition. A large number of such are included in the pa.s.sages already noticed; and we further find descriptions of a destruction from G.o.d for the crime of census-taking[272]--1 Chron. xxi. 1, 11-15--for touching the ark in the endeavor to save it from a fall--2 Sam. vi. 6, 7,--and for many other trifling offences. G.o.d is always represented as favoring the Israelites in their wars and ma.s.sacres, and often as commanding the slaughter of thousands; so that we can easily understand how it happened that the cowardly murderers of the Duke of Gloucester, in the time of Richard II., swore "upon the Body of Christ before a certain chaplain of St. George in the church of Our Lady of Calais, that they would not disclose the murder they were about to perpetrate,"[273]

as also, on what precedent Russia, at the present day, has her war-engines blessed by priests of the "G.o.d of Battles." Deut. xx. 10-15, commands the slaughter of males captured in a siege, but the sparing alive of women and children as booty; and Num. x.x.xi. describes a case in which the command was carried out, with the reservation of a certain portion of young girls for the priests. See also Deut. xxi. 10-14.

Furthermore, a religion that makes man absolute ruler of the earth and all living things, and sanctions animal sacrifice, cannot conduce to a sense of the duty of self-restraint towards other species, and is, in fact, often used as an excuse for the autocracy and cruelty of man.

It is, indeed, strange to see civilized peoples of the nineteenth century proclaiming the divine origin of laws and beliefs like these--laws and beliefs at least as barbarous as those of the Greeks and Romans whose G.o.ds the Christians deride, and far behind the Ethics of some philosophical systems produced among those "heathen" peoples. As has been said, various attempts have been made to explain away these barbarities, or to withdraw all responsibility for them from G.o.d, to whom the Old Testament often directly ascribes them. But in the light of what we know of other primitive peoples the customs of the Jews are only too easily comprehensible; the same barbarities of human and animal sacrifice, slavery, murder without pity, and unscrupulous cruelty of every sort, were to be found, as we have seen, among many other ancient peoples. As for withdrawing the responsibility from the G.o.d of the Jews, Christians forget that, in denying the divine origin of the cruel, brutal, and obscene laws ascribed to G.o.d together with other laws of less barbarity but of organic growth with these, they are forever destroying the grounds of belief in any a.s.sertion of divine supervision, and throwing doubt, by implication, on the New Testament as well, since Christ and his followers were believers in the Law and the Prophets, and often refer to their a.s.sertions and accounts of divine direction.

But most religions have claimed, and do claim, the divine origin and ratification of their laws, as a means of enforcing them.

The G.o.d of the Jews, Jehovah, was originally a nature-G.o.d, the G.o.d of the heavens, like Zeus, Jupiter, and many other of the greatest G.o.ds of other peoples. Science has exploded ancient ideas of the sky; but the Christians still cling to the old terms brought into use at a time when men believed in a flat earth and a region of spirits above floored by an opaque heaven. The G.o.d of the Jews was, like the G.o.ds of all primitive peoples, a "jealous" and revengeful G.o.d, rather to be "feared" than loved; for to such peoples, possessing few resources against the powers of nature and ignorant of their character, the destructive forces of the elements appeared at first rather evil than good, and therefore to be conciliated and appeased; the G.o.ds take on their friendly character only as man comes to learn how the forces of nature may be employed for his benefit, and as he slowly attains, in himself, to sympathetic and moral feeling. Accordingly, the Jews were continually occupied with all manner of propitiatory offerings of their most valuable possessions--their herds and the fruits of the earth; and these were burnt under the impression common to nearly all primitive and savage tribes, that they suffered by fire a sort of death and entered the spiritual world.

Gradually, the Jews became more civilized, and took on the higher ideals of Eastern religions with which they came in contact; but even to very recent date, the "fear" of G.o.d was regarded as the chief essential emotion on the part of the worshipper. Of late, as social ideals have become higher, and sympathy more general, the idea of love, lost for a time through the mixture of Eastern peoples with more barbaric ones, has come to the fore. That a doctrine of polytheism is clearly taught in Gen. iii. 22; vi. 1-4, Christians do not generally even notice. The idea of demiG.o.ds, found in the latter verse, is called by them, when they meet with it in the Greek or Roman religion, a "myth"; and the idea of s.e.xual intercourse between men and G.o.ds, also taught in these verses, is held worthy of all abhorrence, when these "heathen" religions are under consideration. The fact is, that exegesis, forced to advance by progressing civilization, has left far behind the simple original meaning of bible-texts,--such obvious meaning as Christians find in the Buddhist, Persian, or Egyptian Scriptures, when they peruse them. This is true of the New Testament as well as of the Old. The Christian religion has indeed developed into a system of Christian philosophy as different from the Christianity warranted by the Old and New Testaments as were the later Buddhist philosophies from original Buddhism.

When Christ conferred upon his Apostles the power to forgive sins, he laid the foundation for papal authority, and confirmed the ancient authority of the priesthood, preparing the way for that organization of priestcraft which figured so prominently in all the sorrowful history of the Middle Ages. Moreover, the vein of sadness and the subordination of natural modes of life which mark his teaching as they mark only in a greater degree those of the Buddha, easily led to the celibacy and mortification of the flesh which so long condemned the most aspiring from a moral point of view, the most gentle and conscientious, to a life of loneliness, and peopled the world with the progeny of the less moral.

Indeed, if we read Matt. xix. 12 correctly, Christ distinctly taught emasculation as a high religious virtue.

The New Testament tolerated the slavery upheld by the Old Testament, and we not only find no protest whatever against it, but we even find Paul returning a runaway slave to his master. Not only Paul, but John also, taught both predestination and h.e.l.l-fire for idolaters and unbelievers, as well as for the fearful and doubtful, equally with murderers, wh.o.r.emongers, and liars: Rev. xvii. 8; xx. 15. Christ himself plainly proclaims the d.a.m.nation of unbelievers--Matt. xxii. 13, 14; xxiii. 14, 33; Mark xvi. 16; etc.--and he at the same time a.s.serts a very positive doctrine of predestination, avowing that he himself takes special pains that many of those to whom he preaches shall not be able to understand him, believe, and be saved: Mark iv. 11, 12; John xii. 39, 40. His language on these subjects is very clear, and bears no sign of being intended as figurative, though modern Christians prefer to regard it as such rather than to relinquish a religion the morals of which would, by other interpretation, be proved inadequate to the demands of the standards of higher civilization; the same method of exegesis applied to the sacred books of Confucianism or of Buddhism, from which it now appears probable that very many of the Christian ideas were derived, would suit them ill. But even if Christ's language were figurative, it must have some meaning; the wrath and vengeance of G.o.d are continually spoken of in the New Testament as well as in the Old. Such expressions were not looked upon, until of late, as figurative, and they doubtless did much to justify, to the minds of earlier Christians, the burning of heretics. The justification of all sin in G.o.d's elect, a permanent indulgence, is plainly taught by Paul, Rom. viii. 33; iv. 5-8; 1 Cor.

vi. 12. Let us take the Buddhist Scriptures, and, in the light of the better pa.s.sages, or in the light of Siddhartha's devotion to truth and to his fellow men, interpret the pa.s.sages which, morally, we find wanting, and we shall find this religion as beautiful as the Christian.

A chief reason often advanced by Christians for continued faith in their religion, is the comfort conferred by a belief in immortality and the forgiveness of sins through Christ; that is, the rescue of men from the "wrath of G.o.d" through the offering of an innocent being, a "human sacrifice," which was to bear this wrath, and appease it, according to the old Jewish idea of the scapegoat. The morality of the last doctrine we have already condemned; there is no real making atonement in this world; we should recognize this fact, bear the responsibility of our deeds, and in the light of past experience, avoid the repet.i.tion of our old sins. And the moral question as to mortality or immortality is not: "What is the pleasanter to believe?" but "What is the truth?" In this recommendation of the pleasant in belief, we have but an ill.u.s.tration of one of the chief defects of Christian theory, which lays most stress upon faith and far less upon a love of the Truth at all costs. The peace of the Christian's death-bed is often made one of the chief arguments in favor of the Christian religion. But the mind in which there exists the n.o.ble love of truth will seek this only at the cost of all peace and blind content.

On the general connection of faith and morals, Clifford writes: "Belief in G.o.d and in a future life is a source of refined and elevated pleasure to those who can hold it. But the foregoing of a refined and elevated pleasure, because it appears that we have no right to indulge in it, is not in itself, and cannot produce as its consequences, a decline of morality."[274] Indeed, Christianity, as has been already remarked, and as is conclusively shown by any conscientious and unprejudiced examination of the Bible itself, leaves room for an ease of conscience and a self-excuse in even very great sins, which no high standard of morals can tolerate. How many of those who attend church regularly, on Sunday, are restrained by their religion from practising vice and injustice on week-days, under the consolation, if their conscience troubles them at all, that their prayers for forgiveness and the bestowal of charity, or even, in extremity, a death-bed "repentance"

will make their peace with G.o.d? In place of an attempt at reparation towards men, against whom sin is really done, Christians are taught to seek the "forgiveness" of G.o.d. Some there are, indeed, who remember only the law of love and endeavor to follow it. All honor to them. But they are adherents of a modern Christian Philosophy, the product of many good men who have winnowed out the wheat of their religion and left the chaff; they are not followers of the Bible, or even of the New Testament, as a whole. Many there are who are perceiving this, and the old system needs replacement with a newer and higher--with a system which affords clear and evident grounds for moral action, leaves no room for mysticism, self-justification, or inaction, offers no opiate to conscience. Such a system must be founded on the solid rock of scientific Truth; not on any doctrine of blind obedience to traditions; it must take into account man's evolution, that it may progress with his progress.

Many term the Ethics of science dry and uninspiring, and turn, with preference, to religions which, if they give us mysticism or pessimism, give us poetry also; for man is an emotional as well as an intellectual being; and there may be much poetry in pessimism. But again, it may be said that the Truth is that which we should first seek. And especially let it be remembered that, if poetry is lacking, it may be that the deficiency is in ourselves. It is a history many times repeated, that men call their age and its ideas dry and uninteresting, and seek their ideals and inspirations in the past, until the master-mind arises, who boldly faces and interprets the realities about him; and then men exclaim and wonder, and find that their own blindness, and not the age, was at fault. We cling by habit to the old and fear the new; and so we have yet to inspire these new ideals with the beauty gained by a.s.sociation and habit; in themselves, they do not lack beauty. In truth, as I believe that there is more of poetry in the gray wires strung across our streets and guiding the swift, silent, fearful forces in which lies power to light a city or destroy a life, than ever was in any feeble-flamed Grecian lamp, so I believe also that, in the dry, hard, cold-seeming facts of modern science there lurks more poetry than all the ages gone have known; though we may need the poet to interpret it to us. The highest poetry is that of love; and it is the realization of this poetry that the Ethics of Evolution teaches, promises, and enjoins. Certainly the superficial Utilitarianism which looks only at external forms of government and customs and the arithmetically calculated relations of men, not at their inner character and the organic complexity of moral questions, cannot satisfy in the long run.

Nor can the bald Materialism satisfy which, standing by its a.n.a.lysis in physical terms like the physiologist in the dissecting-room with his chemicals about him and the dead nerves and muscles in his hand, exclaims with a triumph that is half a sneer: "This is all." It is not all. The synthesis of nature and of life cannot be represented by its parts merely; the bond of organization wanting, all is wanting. Nor is the action in the brain more real, more forceful, more spontaneous, or freer, than the love for a friend, the thought of him, or the will to do him a kindness.

FOOTNOTES:

[256] "Moral Order and Progress," p. 292; Part I., this book, pp. 250, 251.

[257] "Moral Order and Progress," p. 287, etc.; Part I. p. 249, this book.

[258] "Moral Order and Progress," pp. 307, 312; Part I. pp. 250, 252, 253, this book.

[259] "Moral Order and Progress," Book I. Chap. II.; Part I. pp. 231, 232, this book.

[260] "Moral Order and Progress," p. 332.

[261] See "Die Entwicklungsgeschichte des Weltalls."

[262] "Moral Order and Progress," p. 270; Part I., this book, p. 247.

[263] On the theory of Weismann.

[264] "Human Progress, Past and Present," "The Arena" for Jan., 1892.

[265] "Ethik," p. 344.

[266] See Part I. p. 147.

[267] "The Science of Ethics," pp. 32-34.

[268] George Eliot, "Romola."

[269] Salter, "Ethical Religion."

[270] It is strange that even enlightened Christians often, without thinking, interpret the "Scriptures" referred to by Christ as if they, in some way, included the New Testament, which was not written till long after his death.

[271] "The Origin of Civilization," p. 373.

[272] Superst.i.tious fears are often awakened in savage tribes, and among the ignorant of our own more advanced societies, by attempts at census-taking.

[273] Pike, "History of Crime," I. p. 405.

[274] Essays and Lectures, "The Influence upon Morality of a Decline in Religious Belief."

CHAPTER IX

THE IDEAL AND THE WAY OF ITS ATTAINMENT

Mr. Stephen questions the possibility of our determining at all what a state of ideal morality should be. I should contend, on the contrary, that there would be little disagreement in opinions as to what the ideal should be, but that rather our chief difficulties must lie in the determination of the course to be pursued in order to attain to the ideal. The profligate, it is true, will not be likely to acknowledge that self-control and faithfulness are parts of an ideal condition if he thinks that the acknowledgment binds him in any way to faithfulness and self-control in his own conduct; and the dishonest man will be chary of admitting that honesty is desirable if his consciousness suggests that he ought therefore to practise unvarying honesty himself. But the dishonest man is generally very thoroughly convinced of the desirability of honor and uprightness in every one else; and the profligate also is generally both among the loudest in his denunciation of unfaithfulness in those he feels should be true to him, and sufficiently ready to acknowledge the social advantages of principles opposite to his own, if you can but convince him that it is only a matter of pure theory you are discussing, which will doubtless never be put in practice by society as a whole, and which in no way interferes with your thorough approval of his own action. So, too, the cruel, the rough, and the rude, will easily confess that unselfishness, unfailing kindness, tact, and consideration in the rest of society, are what the world needs. Did these virtues exist, there would be no need of the choice between evils now necessary.