Among the particular virtues which science has fostered is philosophical veracity or love of truth. This virtue of intellectual sincerity is to the scientist what the virtue of faith or belief is to the churchman. Without it there is no salvation in the world of science. The man of science must be a truth-lover, a truth-seeker, and a truth-teller. He must take every pains to find out what is the exact fact, and then make a scrupulously veracious report of what he has found. He must be loyal to the truth at all hazards.
This reverent regard for the truth, this intellectual sincerity, which is the cardinal virtue of the man of science, is fostered in him partly by the recognition of the supreme importance of exactness when it comes to the application of scientific knowledge to the arts of life. The least departure here from the truth of the matter means dire disaster and loss. Then also the veraciousness of nature reacts upon the student of her laws. Nature is not only infinitely exact in all her movements, but punctual in the fulfillment of all her engagements. She keeps her word with us, as Emerson says. She is the same yesterday, to-day, and forever. The careless, unveracious man can enter into no partnership with her.
Open-mindedness and impartiality are elements of this virtue of intellectual veracity. The wide divergence between philosophical and theological morality is here impressed upon the student of moral ideals and standards. In the ethics of theology doubt, even sincere doubt, is reckoned as an unfortunate infirmity, or often as positive and fatal sin. Science, on the other hand, reckons it a cardinal duty. Hardening oneself in belief when there are circumstances calculated to awaken doubt, even the slightest conceivable doubt, is justly regarded by the man of science as treachery to truth and an unpardonable sin.
It is in the creation of this scientific conscience, which pronounces the habit of accuracy, open-mindedness, impartiality of judgment, love of truth for truth’s sake a supreme virtue, that science has rendered one of its greatest services to morality.
Egotistic tendencies of the doctrine of evolution: the philosophy of Nietzsche
The scientific doctrine of evolution, which teaches that life has advanced from lower to higher forms through struggle and competition, resulting in the survival of the fittest, has exercised a profound influence upon all the sciences relating to man, but upon none has it left a deeper impress than upon the science of ethics.[733] Nor have its effects here been confined to ethical speculation; it has largely shaped and molded actual conduct.
In some respects this influence has been harmful to both ethical theory and practice. In the domain of philosophy it may best be traced in the teachings of Nietzsche. Nietzsche insists that man must follow the lead of nature; that the struggle for existence must be kept up on the human plane just as it goes on in the lower realms of life; that the strong should use for their own advancement the weak; that the nurture and care of the defective and weak is a crime against humanity[734]—for “the hope of the future lies in perfecting the strong, not in strengthening the weak”; that only through the struggle for existence has nature produced her highest type, man, and that it is only through obedience to this great cosmic law, in accordance with which the higher prey upon the lower, that “the superman,” the highest possible type of mankind, can be brought into existence.
This teaching tends to steel the heart against human sympathy and to blunt all the finer sensibilities. It seems to justify and excuse all kinds of antisocial action. And, indeed, the doctrine has been used as a justification and excuse not only of individual self-assertion and egotism but of national and race self-assertion and egotism as well. Modern imperialism has sought to justify aggression upon weaker and so-called “inferior races” by an appeal to this law of evolution as it works on the lower levels of life. Thus the doctrine has in a certain measure fostered national egotism, and has stood right in the way of the development of a true international morality.
Altruism versus egotism in the cosmic process
But these drifts toward egotism in modern philosophy and life induced by evolutionary science are more than compensated by opposing movements of ethical thought created by a truer interpretation of the facts of evolution and a deeper insight into the cosmic process.[735]