Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/100

Rh egoism from altruism, they may all be blessed: but what is that to us? We ask, What ought we to do? We learn in answer that the people of the future will feel no need to ask that question. We desire that duty be defined. We learn in answer that if men ever get perfect, the sense of obligation will vanish, so that nobody will question: What is duty? at all. This may be magnificent, but it is not ethics.

For what do we really learn by hearing about the society of the future? Only that, in the time coming, there will be such and such freedom from moral problems? Do we then also learn that we ought to do our best to bring about that reign of peace? Not at all, for we are sure that we shall never live to see that day; and we cannot know why we should work for it so long as we are still in doubt about the value of selfishness. Do we learn that we ought to conform as nearly as is possible to the rules that will govern men in that ideal state? But how then do we learn that? Is it because the coming form of conduct will be the “highest form of adjustment of acts to ends,” as the modern apostles of evolution teach that it will be? Nay, though we do accept most confidently all that these apostles teach about the future, since surely they must know about it, we still miss anything of moral significance in these physical facts. For why is this coming state the highest? Does any one say: Because it will come at the end of the physical process of evolution? Nay then, if every more advanced state is to be more acceptable, by such reasoning the sprouting potato