Page:Woman and her possibilities.djvu/29

 to nature after the thunder of ages of convention and listen to her still small voice in things pertaining to morals? Morality itself is subjected to rigorous examination, with some striking results by even the strictest moralists.

"The function of morality," says a modern university professor of sociology, "is to regulate the activities of associated life so that all may have what we call fair play." Morality means "live and let live." This reads uncommonly like the Golden Rule. Morality concerns itself with duty, doing things, w r ith actions, with conduct, which is not merely three-fourths, but the whole, of life. And conduct is good or bad, right or wrong, as it helps or hinders the welfare of the individual and the race.

The Christian is

A writer says, "Jesus placed the entire emphasis upon action—not upon belief, not upon good intention, but upon efficiency." This is what Nietzsche fails to comprehend when he criticizes Christianity and compares his philosophy with what he conceives to be the teaching of Christ. A quarter of a century ago it was my business, and it then promised to be my life's work, to study mental philosophy in all its branches, and all its bearings. Recently I wondered if I still possessed any of the former facility of finding my way in the mazes of philosophies, so I read through Nietzsche's philosophy. I failed to find anything in that much-discussed philosophy that is in any way antagonistic to Christ's teaching. Christ taught self-expression as well as self-repression, self-assertion as well as self-denial, culture as well as restraint. The Christian ideal of man is not a being made up of a bundle of nega-