Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 36.djvu/761

Rh a noteworthy fact that many great ethical teachers have been at the same time religious reformers; such were Zoroaster, Buddha, Jesus, and Mohammed. In other cases, as in the codes of the Egyptian Ptah-hotep and of Socrates, though there is no religious revolution, a religious atmosphere is present. Where religion seems to be lacking, as in the case of Confucius, still it may be said that the ethical system has arisen in a community permeated with religious ideas. From these facts it might be supposed that religion has been the most powerful influence in the world in the elaboration of moral codes. But it must be borne in mind that at a period when religion was bound up with common life much more closely than now, a practical thinker (and such the great religious reformers were) could not separate the two. In Semitic nations not only morals but government also was bound up with religion. Ethics and religion were so intertwined in human development that, though their origins and laws of growth may have been different, they had come together into a substantial unity.

In thus associating itself with ethics, religion supports it by supernatural sanctions. It is a question of serious import, which doubtless now occupies many minds, whether the moral status of society could be maintained without this external aid. It is a question to which no decided answer can be given, because the experiment has never been tried. The probability is that, if the religious element of thought were now abruptly eliminated from our society, the moral life would suffer enormously if it did not perish outright. Such a sudden withdrawal is, however, impossible, and need not enter into our calculations. The elimination of religion, if it can be conceived of as possible, could be effected only by a very gradual process, during which men would be little by little trained under other influences. The vanishing of religion, indeed, out of human life is hardly conceivable; but we may suppose that the conception of its sanctions may change—the physical-supernatural form of them may give way to the moral. This change has actually begun: a not inconsiderable section of the Christian world now believes that the rewards and punishments which attach to well-doing and ill-doing are determined by natural law, whether in the physical or in the moral life. Nor can we see that the effect of this change on the ethical status of society is bad. If the bodily rewards and punishments have vanished, new and strong ethical motives have been introduced; there is a deeper sense of personal responsibility, and there are higher ideals.

A still more fundamental inquiry is how far the practical ethical life of the world is affected by the belief in future rewards and punishments. But to discuss this point properly would