Moralism.
Since the Stoics and Kant, metaphysical hypotheses have come to be regarded from a new point of view. What to-day has come to be the great charm of such hypotheses is that they endeavour to lend a moral significance to the world, to impress upon the course of universal evolution a direction conformable to that of our conscience as affectionate and sociable beings. The future history of religion may be summed up in this law: that religious dogmas, transformed at first into simple metaphysical conjectures, reduced later to a certain number of definite hypotheses, among which the individual made his choice on increasingly rational grounds, ultimately came to bear principally on the problem of morals. Religious metaphysics, in effect, will result in a transcendental theory of universality, an ideal sociology embracing in its sweep all the beings that constitute the universe; and this sociology will be founded, not upon physical inductions, like that of the earliest religions, nor upon ontological inductions like that of the first system of metaphysics, but upon the moral conscience of mankind. Animism, theism, pantheism, are destined to fall under the domination of what may be called moralism.
Increasing interest in moralism.
Such diverse solutions as may be given of the moral problem thus understood will always interest mankind, but they will occupy a smaller and smaller place in its practical life; they will lose the extraordinary influence that religions have often possessed over the conduct of men. As society progresses the moral agent will find less and less need to appeal for support in the conduct of life to metaphysical hypotheses and systematic uncertainty. Positive morality will more and more completely suffice for the ordinary exigencies of life. Generosity of heart will be less dependent on the intelligence for its adventurous impulses; it will produce them unassisted. Metaphysical speculations will tend to become, like the highest æsthetic products, a luxury; they will be sought for their own sakes, and for the general elevation of mind that they bestow, rather than for guidance in particular matters of conduct. The destiny of the world will interest us quite apart from any question of our own destiny, and our voyages into the unknown will be prompted not by selfishness but by disinterested curiosity.
And in reflective rectitude.
We do not believe, however, with Mr. Spencer that the part to be played by the reflective conscience in human life is destined to diminish, nor that man will come to do what is right in obedience to a blind instinct—to rush into the fire or throw himself into the water to save the life of a fellow-creature almost as irreflectively as he would lift his hat to a friend in the street. On the contrary, man will become more and more reflective and philosophical in all things, and among others, in regard to the directing principles of his conduct. And there is no room in all this for the belief that the dissolving influence exercised by reflection upon primitive instincts will seriously hinder the growth of the social instinct. Intelligence paralyzes instincts only when it is obliged to oppose them, when it does not justify them, when it aims really at displacing them.[129] But speculative thought will always justify social instinct, even considered purely from the scientific and positive point of view. As we have shown, the most extraordinary manifestation of the social instinct, devotion, belongs to the general law of life, and does not in the least possess the abnormal character that has sometimes been attributed to it; to run a risk for someone else is not to be purely unselfish, for one is attracted by the sublimity of danger and of risk, and a capacity for this attraction has been developed and rendered powerful by natural selection in the higher species of the animal kingdom; the desire to expose one’s self is almost normal in a morally well-constituted individual. In morals as in æsthetics sublimity is allied to beauty.[130] The speculative instinct will, therefore, not counteract the social instinct; it will rather fortify it, and human disinterestedness generally, for speculation itself is the most disinterested act of the mental life. Generally speaking, reflective conscience is always more disinterested than irreflective action, which is typified in reflex action; it is less directly useful to life on its simplest terms. Parallel to the development of conscience and of speculative intelligence there goes always a development of our moral activity. The more truly intelligent a human being is the more active he is; and the more active he is, the less self-sufficing he becomes, the greater his need to live for someone else. Antisocial beings are almost always mentally and physically dawdlers, who are incapable of continuous mental or physical labour. Activity of mind must inevitably, therefore, indirectly fortify the moral instincts. Sociality is developed by thought.
Possible to classify the diverse systems of future.
Although by the progress of analysis the complication of the great mental and moral hypotheses must increase, it is possible, even at the present day, to foresee the main synthetic groups under which the several systems will be classifiable.
Present interest in such systems.