Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 15.djvu/701

 upon his fetich to change his heart in answer to prayer, as sanitary science is impossible where he relies upon his fetich to stay a pestilence in answer to prayer.

So far from materialism being a menace to morality, when it is properly understood, it not only sets before man a higher intellectual aim than he is ever likely to reach by spiritual paths, but it even raises a more self-sacrificing moral standard. For when all has been said, it is not the most elevated or the most healthy business for a person to be occupied continually with anxieties and apprehensions and cares about the salvation of his own soul, and to be earnest to do well in this life in order that he may escape eternal suffering and gain eternal happiness in a life to come. The disbeliever might find room to argue that here was an instance showing how theology has taken possession of the moral instinct and vitiated it. Having set before man a selfish instead of an altruistic end as the prime motive of well-doing—his own good rather than the good of others—it is in no little danger of taking away his strongest motive to do uprightly, if so be the dead rise not. Indeed, it makes the question of the apostle a most natural one: "If, after the manner of men, I have fought with beasts at Ephesus, what advantageth it me if the dead rise not?" Materialism can not hesitate in the least to declare that it is best for a man's self, and best for his kind, to have fought with the beasts of unrighteousness at Ephesus or elsewhere, even if the dead rise not. Perceiving and teaching that he is essentially a social being, that all the mental faculties by which he so much excels the animals below him, and even the language in which he expresses his mental functions, have been progressive developments of his social relations, it enforces the plain and inevitable conclusion that it is the true scientific function, and at the same time the highest development, of the individual to promote the well-being of the social organization; that is, to make his life subserve the good of his kind. It is no new morality, indeed, which it teaches; it simply brings men back to that which has been the central lesson and the real stay of the great religions of the world, and which is implicit in the constitution of society; but it does this by a way which promises to bring the understanding into entire harmony with moral feeling, and so to promote by a close and consistent interaction their accordant growth and development; and it strips morality of the livery of superstition in which theological creeds have dressed and disfigured it, presenting it to the adoration of mankind in its natural purity and strength.—Fortnightly Review.