Page:The Kingdom of Man - Ralph Vary Chamberlin 1938.djvu/33

Rh ourselves, and the fact that this premise has been only so recently adopted accounts for the little, comparatively, that we do know about man and the little that has been accomplished in the way of needed social reforms that look toward a happier future for the race in the light of a clear understanding of his past, his limitations and his possibilities, including those in the field of intelligence, social sympathy, cooperaton [sic], ethics and purpose, for these are natural manifestations, have had a natural evolution, and are proper objects of scientific study.

Bertrand Russell is wholly wrong, I think, when he asserts that the sphere of values lies outside science, for no change in method is justified when we pass from facts of existence to facts of value. As Professor Thorndike says: "The world needs the insights and valuations of great sages and dreamers. . . . But it also needs scientific methods to test the worth of the prophet's dreams, and scientific humanists to inform and advise its men of affairs and to advise them not only about what is, but about what is right and good."

The material changes wrought by science have necessitated new morals and new ethics because new, far-reaching and unforseen consequences now arise from our actions. "When it became known that leprosy was caused by bacteria and not by devils, the words right and wrong took on new meanings for every leper. It should be obvious, then, that ethical codes must change as knowledge and civilization change." Hence, as John Dewey has said: "The vanity and inexpansibility of values that are merely final and not also means to the enrichment of other occupations of life ought to be obvious." The process of growth, of improvement and progress rather than the static outcome and result become the significant thing. "Growth itself is the only moral end." Not perfection as a final goal, but the ever-enduring process of perfecting, maturing, refining is the aim of living.

What we have come to understand as progress has depended wholly upon the truth as ascertained by the application of intelligence. The achievement of control through knowledge has already justified itself in the field of conduct. Morals are being taken over by the rational intelligence and, it has been said, for the first time we are clearing our moral slums efficiently because we know how. Charity is not now a mystical virtue through which the individual accumulates merit, but it is a problem and obligation of society itself to be gone into as a business. The moral deviations that have scourged mankind have not been matters of depraved conscience, of lack of moral sensibility, or of broken commandments: all resolve themselves into an irrationality which has permitted the establishment and growth of wrong. Every liberty we enjoy, every freedom from wrong, is the outgowth of some intellectual truth, and no error or untruth whatsoever can "contrive to be inoffensive." Thus the distinction commonly drawn between the moral and the intellectual is a fiction or illusion.