Page:Philosophical Review Volume 26.djvu/43

No. 1.] of complete extermination—of themselves. The philosophy on which Lot's daughters acted is not violently disapproved by common sense, and it would not be surprising if the slaughter of men in the present war should stimulate reflection upon the rigidity of sexual codes. For the morality of common sense ordinarily assumes life as a value. As against death the deeper voice is for more life and fuller. Only extreme and hopeless suffering, or loss of reason, or fear of shame, or some fine, high quality outweighs even physical continuance. This is not to deny that the moral consciousness often sets other values above physical existence. Nor can it be ignored that immortality, as once conceived, has waned in power over men's decisions. It is only to suggest that in finding a supreme value we need to beware of resorting to abstract good, and formal right. Thoughts without contents are empty. Turning from the ethics of evolution to the evolution of ethics we come to a field that superficially considered promised nothing startling or unsettling. For we had long been accustomed to the fact that our Celtic or Teutonic or Latin ancestors cherished the code of blood revenge, or accepted wergild, that they held slaves and granted few rights to women, that they employed ordeals and torture, and in the words of Pollock spent their nights in cattle stealing and their days in manslaughter. We had accepted the polygamy of the patriarchs as marking an earlier stage not authoritative for the present. We had looked upon the Law as a schoolmaster. Customs of savage tribes had been reported, and John Locke had argued therefrom. Why then should interest turn in so marked a degree toward this field?

The answer is not to be found wholly in the more abundant information we possess with regard to morals and customs, although no doubt this is a contributing factor. The mass of material classified by Westermarck and Sumner, or in Spencer's Descriptive Sociology, is indeed calculated to promote reflection. But at an earlier day it might have been assimilated to the older conceptions. We might have considered the good traits discovered as so much additional evidence for the moral sense or conscience, and the abominable practices as additional evidence