Joseph McCabe

“ The idea that we shall all get drunk more frequently when we cease to believe in God is one of the funniest of propositions. In point of statistical fact, drunkenness during the last hundred years has decayed in almost the same proportion as religion.
In respect of all three "major vices" we shall prove that the world has grown steadily better while ethical philosophers and preachers were proving to demonstration that it must be growing steadily worse.
Well, what are the other self-regarding virtues? Truthfulness? Theologians have always dealt with veracity as a utilitarian quality. ”

“ But can we maintain a fine sense of honor, generosity, loyalty, and unselfishness? You have only to reflect on the human consequences if we could not, the human advantages if we could, to answer yourself. No system of morals or religion ever did maintain such a standard generally. ”

“ In this series of works I am not concerned with philosophers, as such. Not one of them is an orthodox Christian, and very few of them believe in any kind of God whom the plain man can understand. But the mysticism of philosophy in this respect encourages those who believe in God to suppose that in conscience we really have a reality, a fact, which science cannot explain, and which points, as Eucken says, to a spiritual and supernatural order. ”

“ It may be said that I explain the conscience of the savage and they explain the conscience of civilized man. They will themselves say—I know the rhetoric well—that it is quite natural that the more obtuse and coarser mind of the savage should first perceive the less refined and more utilitarian aspects of moral law, but as the mind of man becomes more sensitive and receptive, it perceives the finer shades of this august reality which has been slowly breaking through the mists. We now, they say, recognize "self-regarding" virtues, as well as rules of social value ”

“ Most of us have not the least temptation to get drunk. It means illness, incapacity for work, hours of misery for an hour's pleasure. In grave cases of habitual drunkenness injury is done to dependents, and the social principle at once enters. In cases of occasional drunkenness there is no need to invoke the moralist. ”

“ I mean that a fine character once formed (a splendid human asset) expresses itself in every act. The honorableness and generosity extend to things where, on strict calculation, the man might act otherwise. ”

“ But as I have pointed out to them for years, having lectured for them for three decades, there is not the slightest use in appealing to large bodies of people to "cultivate the good life for its own sake." ”

“ But we have seen enough here to convince any person; and other books develop the more important points. Moral law slowly dawns in the mind of the human race as a regulation of a man's relations with his fellows in the interest of social life. ”

“ What they give their readers is an analysis of the "conscience" of a highly cultivated and refined modern man, in whose mind the influences of Christianity and a dozen other religions are confused with plain moral law. ”

“ Only those who share their taste, their standard of character, will join. They make no progress.
That proves the failure of Rationalists to sustain character, says the moral philosopher. In point of fact, one of the leading British philosophers, Professor Bosanquet, who used to lecture in the Ethical Movement, quitted it a few years before his death, making precisely this statement. Religion was necessary, he said. ”

“ We have put these tribes in the strict order of their degree of culture—as is, unfortunately, very rarely done—and this corresponds to the various chronological stages in the evolution of the race. We have seen how even the eccentricities and distortions of the moral sentiment can be shown to be part of a normal and continuous development. ”

“ They think a chaste and obstemious man or woman far superior to one who is not chaste or one who drinks beer and smokes. There is no reason in the world why they should not maintain and practice their ideal ”

“ Consecrated men and women find this an effective way of standing out from and above the common crowd. Virginity becomes the most shining of virtues.
We now see plainly how superfluous is the work of moral philosophers. This, they will say, is a "superficial" sketch, and they are "Profound." It is wholly untrue. What I have given the reader is a compilation of the most essential facts about the evolution of morals (never noticed by these theorists) and a series of the most rigorous and logical deductions from them. ”