WOMAN IN CHURCH AND STATE
By Stanton Coit, Ph.D.,
West London Ethical Society,
Queen's Road, Bayswater, England.
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The ethical movement of the last twenty years is a strong proof of humanity's natural bent toward the study and practice of that first of sciences, the science of conduct.
How to behave, and Why, are universal questions; decided first by conditions, then by instinct, then by custom and tradition, then by religion, then by reason. We are rapidly reaching the reasoning stage; hence the popularity of ethics, and of such papers as The Ethical World.
We have ethical publications in this country, good ones, but it is inspiring to get from other lands the vivid sense of that common movement which so marks the uniting of the world.
Mere verbal language was necessary to the faintest human development; written language, in the permanent form of books, established the long roots of our historic life, with its sense of continuity; today the multiplication of periodic literature, widely specialized, speaks our social consciousness. We no longer have to think alone, but the smallest cult has its exponent, giving to each member the strength of all.
In the issue of March 15th of this paper, Dr. Stanton Coit has an article on "The Group Spirit," which treats sympathetically that marvel of social dynamics, "the interpenetrating Third," appearing where two or three are gathered together.
I should like to have discussed with Sir James Mackintosh, however, his contention that moral principles are stationary. They are not, but vary from age to age in accordance with conditions.
PERSONAL PROBLEMS
A friend and subscriber writes me thus: