Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 27.djvu/682

662 To understand clearly the definition of the science, it is necessary to ascertain what the well-being of humanity is. This can be done only by tracing all motives and feelings to their ultimate cause. This ultimate cause is the most powerful instinct implanted in human nature—the preservation of life, which includes our own life and that of our offspring. We live and we want to live. Unconsciously we will flee from danger. We will fight frantically against death. In the presence of great danger we lose our reason, and yet, though volition is powerless, reflex action makes us struggle for safety. Why we want to live, why we were ever endowed with life, is more than man can know; but of this he is certain, that he does not want to die. The fact that a mother will sacrifice herself for her child; that the man who suffers the tortures of the rack, or of incurable disease, or of great mental affliction, will prefer oblivion to existence, does not alter the truth that the love of life is the most powerful instinct implanted in animals and in man. These exceptions, like many apparent exceptions to the law of gravitation, can be satisfactorily explained away.

By the phrase "conducive to the well-being of humanity" is meant not merely the bare preservation of life, but includes all that which makes life itself more pleasant and happy, which will insure a more complete and rounded existence.

All those actions which are conducive to the well-being of humanity, we call good or right; all those actions which are not so conducive, we call bad or wrong. Thus there is an absolute standard of right and wrong.

Already, long, ages ago, it was discovered by experience that a tribe or nation, and every member thereof, would better serve his own prosperity and success by generally telling the truth than by telling falsehoods; so nine times out of ten he would tell the truth. The confusion that would arise were every one to tell nine falsehoods to one truth is inconceivable. The man who had been placed on sentinel duty, when asked whether he had seen the enemy, would answer no, although he knew the enemy to be within the hearing of his voice. The mother would tell her child that certain herbs, which she knew to be poisonous, were good to eat; the child would eat, and die. The father would deny his ability to provide food for his family, although but an hour before he had slain a buffalo or a deer. Telling the truth sometimes, and most of the time, is an absolute necessity, depending not on theological injunctions, but on the very existence of life. Our rude forefathers of the prehistoric age were aware of this fact, and they enunciated the general principle that it is wrong to lie. This is a scientific generalization. It is a law deduced by experience and observation from a great number of facts, and it is as justly entitled to be considered a generalization as Newton's law of gravitation or Pascal's principle of hydrostatics. The experience of nations and of ages