Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 30.djvu/502

482 is charged with materialism; and breathe that atmosphere we must, whether we will or no.

Now the question which I would invite my readers to ponder is, What, in such an age, is the prospect before us as regards those ethical conceptions upon which society has as yet existed? Can they live in this blighted air? And, without them, what will become of the moral life of mankind? Do not let us mistake the fact. We are living in a crisis of the world's history, a great crisis, for it is a moral crisis. Fifty years ago Jouffroy wrote his celebrated article, "Comment finissent les dogmes." He had in view religious dogmas only, and especially the distinctive tenets of Christianity. He might now, were he alive, discuss the question in a much wider sense. Philosophy, as well as religion, has its traditional bases. Certain it is, as mere matter of history, apart from all controversy, that the ethical ideas which have hitherto ruled the conduct of mankind, have rested upon certain metaphysical credenda. As certain is it that the postulates of the old philosophy—a First Cause, by which the universe was brought into existence, and that for a good end, the personality of man, his limited and conditioned liberty and moral responsibility, the immateriality and immortality of the Ego, the absolute nature of ethics—certain it is that these things are now very commonly put aside as antiquated delusions. Kant is no less discredited than St. Paul in the eyes of the prophets of materialism. The practical reason fares as badly as the Christian revelation at the hands of the sages of positivism. Nay, every newspaper hack of Continental Liberalism is ready with his gibe at M.de l'Absolu and Mdlle.l'Âme. In the novel, in the play, in the babble of the drawing-room or the dinner-table, the most august and venerable of ethical doctrines are called in question and denied. Even the supreme authority of conscience is impugned. To its "Thou must" the answer is prompt: "On what compulsion must I? tell me that!" Its "dogmatism" is contemptuosly rejected, for physical science—the only science—is supposed to have given an explanation of it, fatal alike to its authoritativeness and to its coerciveness. No longer may we account of it with St. Paul, as the divine law written in the heart; no longer with Kant, as the law laid by a man's higher self upon himself. Has not Mr.Herbert Spencer resolved its obligation into a long-sighted selfishness? its sanction into a brain-track? Certain it is that every civilization which the world has as yet known, has been reared upon an ethical, not a physical foundation. A common belief in dogmas of morality—I use the word dogmas advisedly—has hitherto been the very condition of social cohesion. To speak of Europe only, its public order has ever been based upon the conviction, deep down in the hearts of all, at the very root of their moral and spiritual being, that man was encompassed by duties—duties which, however grudgingly performed or brutally violated, in countless instances, were everywhere undoubtingly recognized as the divinely imposed laws of life;