Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 50.djvu/22

10 diffused public sentiment was presently backed by the sanctions of law and religion. But, later, another element little by little comes into play. With intellectual progress men begin slowly to realize that certain lines of action make for tribal welfare, and certain other lines to tribal disadvantage; that these observed bearings and results are altogether independent of social custom, the commands of the chief, the utterances of the gods or god; and that thus there is a sanction for conduct deeper and more stable than those currently assigned. Throughout the further evolution of humanity, and down even to our own time, these observed connections between conduct and its consequences continue, it is true, to be interpreted mainly through the medium of the earlier codes—that is to say, even where the natural criterion for conduct is dimly perceived, artificial restraints and incentives are still to the fore. Yet a great gain is none the less achieved, since if the evolving moral code does not replace the earlier codes, it more and more comes to constitute a kind of final standard, by correspondence with which the precepts of such earlier codes may be tested.

We are thus forced to the inference that in the continued evolution of life and thought the ethical criterion of conduct will detach itself more and more completely from the other criteria of which we have spoken, and will be more habitually referred to as the touchstone by which right and wrong in action alone are to be decided. Especially in view of the rapid spread of scientific habits of thought does it seem likely that such a result will be brought about; since the central principle of science—the principle of natural causation—is precisely that which underlies the moral code, with its interpretation of conduct and consequence in terms of cause and effect. This does not, of course, mean that guidance and inspiration from other quarters will not constantly be sought, or that all impulses that we should here, strictly speaking, call ultra-moral impulses, will be entirely disregarded. But it does certainly mean that there will be an increase of the already manifest tendency to hold in view the ethical criterion as the ultimate test of conduct, to interpret every side of life's activities more constantly in terms of this, and to insist that in every case of discord between the criterion of morality on the one side and any other lower criterion whatsoever upon the other, we shall revise our principles and our practice without hesitation or demurrer, in such way as to bring them into fundamental harmony with the dictates of the moral law.

And here a very serious question arises. In tracing back the radical distinctions of right and wrong to purely naturalistic sources, do we detract in any way from the authority, the