VI.]

Christianity and Natural Ethics.

273

embrace, and a breast that would heave, and adjusting a bottle of milk in the place of the natural fountain for baby's supply, he admired the work of his hands and was sure, absolutely sure that baby would be delighted beyond bounds. So when all things were arranged, he brought the baby and laid it on the breast of the lovely mother, and the eyes smiled down, and the arms moved in embrace; the man thought is was a perfect success, when suddenly a yell that seemed beyond the power of baby lungs burst from that baby throat, and with frantic struggles the baby tried to get away from what it felt, without instruction, was no mother at all, and no substitute for one. And so when it is proposed to exchange the guidance and control and sympathy and life-giving love of the All-father for the machinery-ethics of blind force and matter, humanity protests as did that babe, against the whole business of fraud.

Mr. Spencer says that Christianity objects to natural ethics, exaggerates slight differences into antagonisms. Now that is not true of the Bible or of the Christianity I know anything about. I have been taught that natural morality, wherever true, is endorsed, perfected, completed, by the revelation of Christ. Only Mr. Spencer must remember that a good deal that he calls natural morality was both unknown and thought unnatural before the Bible came and furnished the world with these moral facts. Again he thinks that Christians will be offended because they find that the ethics of the evolution-philosophy and of science agree with those of the Christian religion.1 O, bless your heart Mr. Spencer, don't be alarmed; we have no objection to your helping to show to the world that Christian morality—even the bones of it that you have picked—are all in perfect agreement with the most advanced science, actual or hypothetical. Only let me remind you that these principles of morality were current before science was born, and that if the 1 Ibid. Introduction, p. 20, etc.

274

Illogical Evolution of

[LECT. Bible had not provided the facts for you, and compelled people to show by their lives that these principles were true, your science and machinery would never have produced them. Your philosophy has produced no moral principle. I have no objection to your showing the scientific value of Christian moral truth, but I do object to your taking the fruit from off the living tree on which it grew, and tying it on the dry machinery of your evolution-philosophy, and claiming that as the true ripening power.

And this brings us to the test of the system as a whole. As in all other philosophical ethical systems, Mr. Spencer starts out with a theory that must be assumed as true, and into the service of which all possible facts must be pressed and all other facts ignored. The theory is still the evolution of blind force and matter without a mind to guide it. Mr. Spencer is sublimely unconscious of unbridged chasms and impassable gulfs, which bar the progress of a scientific evolution theory, but with giant strides steps from peak to peak in nature, declaring with the voice of one who knows, that they were all evolved, and if science can't find any proofs of it-why never mind, so much the worse for the proofs. Professor Ewing, in the second lecture of this course, pointed out very clearly that even allowing the truth of the evolution theory within the range of physical science, it was subject to limits, and there were regions into which it did not enter. He allowed in the argument the evolution of life as thinkable, as possible perhaps, but when it came to the evolution of consciousness, he pointed out that Mr. Spencer's explanation or proof was a lamentable logical failure. The argument amounts to this; there were sensations, and sensations simple, and sensations complex, and then lo! there was consciousness. Every scientist of note or thinker that I have read endorses Mr. Ewing's statement. Your own sense, I think, will endorse it too; and I am not aware of any one that has done better than Mr. Spencer in accounting for the evolution of consciousness.

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Consciousness and Morality.

275

It is not for me to enter into the subject fully here, but the argument for the evolution of morality is equally a logical curiosity. The idea is this:1 conduct is the adjustment of means to ends; good is success, bad means failure. He then brings out a beautiful succession of facts drawn from the researches of science, extending from molluscs up to the complicated arrangements of the political life of man. The lower were shown to serve the higher, but each to have certain ends to gain with certain means to obtain those ends ;-as little fish seek for littler fish for food, and dart away from bigger fish that seek to eat them. The higher we ascend in the animal world, the more complicated the ends and the more complex the means, as when birds build nests, lay eggs, rear young. In the highest mammal of all, man, the ends are more complex, and in civilized man more complex still than in savage tribes. As aims in life become more complex and means to be adjusted more numerous, the adjustment of means to ends gradually-mark the word-gradually becomes moral. The end of man is to produce and enjoy pleasure, virtue is the adjustment of acts so as to have pleasure—" a surplus of agreeable feelings" are his words. And the supreme end of man is to find means to prolong his life.2 Man is the highest mammal; the type of absolute good, of absolute morals, is a healthy mother giving suck to her healthy babe. The same mother compelling the same child a little later to study at times instead of perpetual play, or giving it an unpleasant medicine to save its life, is relatively right but wrong in a measure, because she inflicts a pain. Thus he brings you up within sight of morality, but where's the morality? All these acts were produced by evolving force. The substratum of evolution teaching is forcenatural selection by the strongest; survival of the fittest. That

3

1" Data of Ethics," Chap. iii. Good and Bad in Conduct, etc.

2 Ibid, p. 14, etc.

3 Ibid. Chap. xv. Absolute and Relative Ethics.

276

Spencerian Moralists

[LECT.

the strong may live, the weak must perish. Let the principle go on up into social life; man must oppress the woman: the strong man must oppress the weak; the strong nation must oppress the weaker nation and exterminate the useless races. "Hold," you say; "Mr. Spencer teaches just the opposite. No voice is stronger than his, no words more eloquent than his in depicting the horrid wrongs of weaker peoples oppressed by stronger, and his denunciations have an added fire when the oppressor bears the name of Christian." Very true; I am glad to say that Mr. Spencer's moral sense, though he ignores it in his philosophy, is stronger in practice than the logic of his mind. His moral theory has no logical basis for his sympathy. If it is true that all these things are evolved, then this Natural Selection still going on is the necessary grinding away of the evolution-machine, and why blame the strong for obeying evolution and ridding the world of the weak? Or look at it in another way. Mr. Spencer dwells on the moral inferiority of civilized men, in comparison with the honest, upright character of many weak oppressed savages, especially when the argument can be twisted into a fling against Christianity. Now, how does it come that in these evolved people such immorality abounds, while in unevolved tribes high morality is found? Doesn't it look as if morality were not a production of Evolution ?

But Mr. Spencer's followers are more logical than he. Dr. Van Buren Denslow,' a practical American, believes in no half measures. He has come into this line under Mr. Spencer's guidance, and he believes in following up the lead to its normal logical conclusions. He tells us there is no moral difference between a lie and a truth. It is invariably the strong who require the weak to tell the truth, and always to promote some interest of the strong. "Theft is no real moral wrong. Thou

1 Author of " Modern Thinkers."

VI.]

More Logical than Spencer.

277

shalt not steal' means only I will take care you don't steal from me. Laws against unchastity were framed by the strong to protect their own wives only. We assert that moral precepts are selfish maxims of the strong to maintain their power." Again Dr. Denslow continues: "The unphilosophical element in Herbert Spencer's scheme is its dogmatical assumption that there is a moral law, philosophically deducible by argument from the facts of nature. An ethical system which boils down into an exhortation to all men to promote their own interests has no ethical quality left in it; it pertains to the business of selfpreservation and not of morals, since to have a moral quality, an act must raise the question,-Is it right? which mere attention to business does not raise, any more than the flight of birds, the falling of water, or the explosion of gases." That is the logical natural ethics of Spencer's evolution philosophy as propounded by his own disciple,-a mere business calculation without a moral element in it. It has no meaning for right and wrong, they are simply phases of pleasure or pain. There is no place for good and true as such, no conception of sin or evil apart from mere pain. No place for meekness, love, humility: these are weaknesses only. In the struggle for existence, that carnivores may live, herbivores must die; that the lion's young may be reared, the young of the deer must be orphaned or eaten. And so that a Bonaparte may develop, a million men may be slaughtered. It is only an evolving struggle. Even though men's actions remain the same as those now called moral, morality is dead.1 Men are only automata, externally mimicking the actions of moral beings. There is no guilt or innocence, no merit or demerit, no responsibility or conscience. No sin or righteousness. Remorse and shame fade away, punishment is mere self-defense. There is no justice in it; a mere struggle of the

1 See also Bowne's "Studies in Theism."