Joseph McCabe

“ Evolution said that the human race had been evolving, from the savage to the civilized level, during at least some hundreds of thousands of years. This meant two things, as far as the great problem of the origin of moral law was concerned. It meant, first, that the law may have arisen amongst, or been formulated by, human beings themselves long before the historic civilizations arose. This would explain how the ancient civilizations simply found themselves in possession of the moral code, and could therefore not suppose that it was drawn up by men. ”

“ Of the phenomena of moral consciousness in the race at large he knows nothing. Of the revolt of sincere modern thinkers against moral codes he can give no sensible explanation. He lives in a hot-house, and then thinks he can tell us the normal temperature in which the rest of us live. And this applies to the Felix Adlers and other ethical philosophers who tell America what to think about moral law. I ought to add that the English philosopher, Professor Carveth Read, has written a much more sensible book (Natural and Social Morals) on the lines of Evolution. ”

“ The reader who is inclined to smile at the philosophers, or to wonder how the deepest thinkers of the race could wander so far astray, must face the problem as it confronted them.
Unquestionably there was in the mind of practically all men an imperious sense of moral law. Men might defy it, but they did not deny it. ”

“ But in proportion as men rise toward a rational order—an order prescribed by rational consideration only, not by blind subservience to tradition—the ideas of the moral and immoral come to coincide more and more with human and social interests. ”

“ Evolution has made all this mysticism superfluous; and it is the only explanation of moral law in which you can put any confidence, because it is the only theory which takes into account all the facts of the moral life.
Since the days of John Stuart Mill and Herbert Spencer our knowledge of savage ideas has grown enormously. In such a work as Professor E.A. Westermarck's Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas (2 vols.) , which is the greatest recent scientific study of ethics, you have the moral ideas and practices of all the, backward fragments of the human race. ”

“ What we see is just man's mind in possession of the idea that his conduct must be regulated by law, and clumsily working out the correct application of that idea as his intelligence grows and his social life becomes more complex. It is not a question of the mind of the savage imperfectly seeing the law. It is a plain case of the ideas of the savage reflecting and changing with his environment and the interests of his priests. ”

“ People who imagine that Rationalism is just a passing phase of our time are strangely ignorant. It arose in every civilization, when the height of mental development wag reached; and it was bludgeoned into silence by new priesthoods when the reaction came. ”

“ There is no such categorical and eternal law. There are simply rules of conduct, obviously of a social significance, which society impresses upon every child, man, and woman; and there is a good deal of uncertainty about them. ”

“ For the moment I am only pressing the social nature of moral law because it is essential to the evolutionary theory of it.
Strange human groups have arisen throughout the ages. 'There is almost no conceivable vagary that has pot at some time broken upon the imagination of man and been carried out in his life. ”

“ Wherever religion or superstition has perverted the conscience, you get very extraordinary notions of sin: amongst the different castes of Hindus, for instance, and amongst savages. You get mortally serious rules about washing, sneezing, coughing, excreting, wearing hats, and so on. ”

“ But until the idea of evolution arose again, there was no possibility of explaining it, at least fully. Some of the Greeks and the Deists could see how closely this law was related to the social interests of man. Justice, truthfulness, and self-control are obviously desirable social qualities. ”

“ Now, Eucken's teachings about morality—I translated two of his books, and so I am familiar with his views—show very clearly why many philosophers and their religious readers cling to the old mystic theory, and reject the evolutionary theory, of morality. ”

“ The entire situation was changed when the truth of evolution was proved. Some writers are fond of saying that evolution describes processes, but does not explain anything. You have here a good illustration of the foolishness of that gibe at science. ”

“ Dante was at first one of a large group of Rationalists at Florence, and in the first part of his Comedy he has not quite shaken off their beneficent influence. He ignores the church-classification of sins. Sex-sinners and proud men have not the worst torments in his horrible charnel-house. Sinners against the social body are the most unfortunate. ”

“ Take Professor Eucken, of Jena University, whose works on morality and religion have a large circulation in England and America. Professor Osborn in one of his works mentions Eucken as one of the German scientists who have returned to a religious view of life! Eucken knows nothing whatever about science. ”