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

by Cora May Williams

This is, in fact, an assumption which the moral members of society have, in general, made. They boast of the morals of their religion, comparing it, in this respect, with other religions; and thus they subject it to the test of morality. Moreover, when we examine the Christian gospel, we find that it in general assumes the moral laws as already existent and only urges obedience to them. The good is, as we have seen, that which conduces to the general welfare. The earliest religions had no connection with rules of morality; these have developed with the social life of human beings and have, in it, their root.

As to the belief in immortality, cannot the human being do right without the thought of the reward and punishment of another life? As a matter of fact, many good men have not possessed such a belief. The distance of such an end often makes its effect a weak one, and the motive may easily become selfish. Yet it is true that a loss of faith may include a loss of morality, in case the belief exist that there is no basis for morality outside religion; the responsibility of such a loss of morality lies with those who teach this latter doctrine. Through love to others and the thought of the immortality of influence, the moral man gains a larger life and loses the fear of death. He who has thus faced the thought of death finds life more earnest but not less happy. Each hour has not the less its own joy because there is an end, at last. Nor, in spite of the deep pain the loss of friends causes us, do we lose them wholly, since the memory of all that was best in them may remain with us. Our own pain may bring to us a deeper sympathy with, and love for, others.

If we are able to love the good in God, we may also learn to love the good in those about us, and be incited, by it, to emulation. The love of the good in men has always had stronger effect than love for a distant God of whom but little was known. It was the thought of the man Buddha which exerted an ennobling influence upon thousands, and it was the thought of another human being that moved the "christians" more strongly than did that of a Father in Heaven. Do we love father and mother, brother or sister, wife or child, or our friends, for God's sake? Why may we not love all men, as we love our friends and children, for their own sake?

It has been said that there is no accountability, if not to God. But if God is the author of the world, he must himself be the cause of evil, either by direct influence or by neglect to avert. Where, then, is the justice of his punishment? It does not suffice to answer that God's justice is not our justice; for in that case, what right have we to apply the word to him at all?

History demonstrates the fact that morality is by no means necessarily connected with religion. In the name of religion millions upon millions of human beings, and these often the most upright and conscientious men of their nation, have been put to death, and thus the civilization of whole peoples has been retarded. Slavery in America had no stronger friends than the churches. How is the forgiveness of sins by God to be justified? Are the evils which they caused any the less existent because of such forgiveness, and is it well for the doer to escape, in this way, the sense of responsibility? Only labor for the good of humanity is the way of atonement. We ourselves are the creators of the kingdom of righteousness.

Many claim that Ethics is not indeed based upon Theology, but that it needs a metaphysical, a teleological, foundation. For it presupposes that human life has an "end." If we wish to ascertain how our life should be conducted, we must ascertain what is the end Nature has in view for us.

But an end is an effect imagined beforehand and willed, which we cannot bring about immediately but only through a chain of causes. These causes we call the means to the end. They too are willed, but only indirectly and because the end is attainable only through them. These processes to an end are sometimes treated as if the causal succession in them were reversed, so that the last effect appears as the beginning, and the future determines the present; in this sense, the end has been called the end-cause, because the final link of the process causes the beginning. But this is a senseless conception, since the future, that which does not yet exist, cannot now operate. In fact, the succession of causes and effects is no more broken into in the processes leading to an end than in any other processes. When a human being imagines to himself a result and endeavors to bring it about, these mental processes are not future but present; and they are not determined by an influence of the future upon the present, but by an influence of the past upon the present; they follow from experience, that is, from that which has already occurred. They are causal processes in which the activities of understanding and will have part. Hence "ends" exist in nature in so far as they exist in man and the higher animals; but outside these, ends cannot be predicated, unless Nature is regarded either as gifted with imagination and will or as the creation of a being possessing these. But imagination and will require, according to all our experience, a highly developed nervous system, and to assume their existence where such a centralized system does not exist is scientifically injustifiable. Moreover, the laws of thought by no means determine us to inquire after a cause of the whole world, since the concept of cause is applicable only to changes, not, however, to enduring existences and their qualities.

Or let us assume that we had discovered an end set by Nature. Then, either it would appear useless to interfere with its attainment and unnecessary to assist in it, or it would appear to us possible to oppose this end. In this latter case, cause must be shown why we should assist, or should resist, the process of Nature.

Many philosophers have said that man should live according to his own nature. If the word "nature" here denotes the totality of his characteristics, it is evident that the worst actions are not less natural than the best. Therefore, the word nature cannot, as here used, have this sense; the natural in this sense is not identical with the moral. Nor can the term as here used refer to the usual, for in that case the greatest moral excellence, as unusual, must be rejected. Nor can it be used to designate the more primary, for in that case, again, the later developments of benevolence and truthfulness should be rejected.

The word can have but one other sense, namely, as opposed to artificial. But what is in man artificial and what is natural? It seems that the natural is understood as that which is not the work of human intention and reflection, of labor, and of education. Innate impulses would be, according to this definition, natural. But it is evident that one cannot abandon himself to his blind impulses; society could not exist under such circumstances.