Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 50.djvu/23

Rh, the peculiar sanctity and importance of the ethical code? What, in other words, are the remote emotional tendencies involved in the treatment of conduct from the evolutionary point of view here assumed?

I regard this matter as of especial moment on account of the recent contention of Mr. Balfour (1) that practically "no moral code can be effective which does not inspire, in those who are asked to obey it, emotions of reverence; and (2) that practically the capacity of any code to excite this or any other elevated emotion can not be wholly independent of the origin from which those who accept that code suppose it to emanate." I assent to both these propositions, while I most distinctly join issue with the writer in his inference that by the precepts of the naturalistic moral code the higher emotions, which he rightly holds as fundamentally necessary, can not possibly be called forth.

The gradual decline of the older theology will, I am convinced, bring with it no decadence in our feelings of awe, reverence, sacredness, mystery, but simply a transference of these feelings from the so-called supernatural to the natural—from the power manifested in miracle to the power revealed in law. And thus, by a gradual but inevitable process of adjustment, will it be without possibility of question, when the naturalistic ethics of the future shall have taken the place of the supernaturalistic ethics of the past. Of the moral ideal it may thus be said that it "decomposes but to recompose" with fuller beauty and richer meaning. Rooted fast and deep in the very constitution and conditions of life, itself part of the everlasting order of cosmic growth, written on no tables of stone to be broken or crushed under foot, graven on no page of human fashioning to be torn or obliterated or otherwise destroyed, the moral law thus indeed reveals itself as the eternal law—the utterance and the declaration through the universe itself of that power of which this throbbing world of life and sense and thought is, after all, but the garment and partial expression. Over the unshaken foundations of such a faith as we can thus make our own, the tides of time and change wash and curl in vain. Creeds and speculations, precepts and philosophies, pass away and are forgotten, but such a faith indeed endureth forever.

That to affiliate ethical principles in this way upon natural law adds immeasurably to the deep and terrible responsibilities with which life is coming to confront the modern man, must be acknowledged. From no other point of view does the high seriousness of conduct, the imperiousness of duty, the strenuousness of living, become so emphatic; in no other way are we forced to