Let us clear our minds of cant. That is now an old and threadbare saying, but it ought to be put at the beginning of every essay and book on morality. I dare not suggest that it ought to be the text of every sermon, or the sermons would be too short. We talk and write the most solemn, and often the most hypocritical, nonsense about morals. This series of books is for people who want facts, sane thinking, and fearless utterance. We have now seen the facts. Let us draw and express plain conclusions.
Moral-law is social law. We have the whole story of its evolution before us. We have studied tribes without moral ideas, tribes with a dull glimmer of moral sentiment, and tribes with a moral code in every stage of development. We have put these tribes in the strict order of their degree of culture—as is, unfortunately, very rarely done—and this corresponds to the various chronological stages in the evolution of the race. We have seen how even the eccentricities and distortions of the moral sentiment can be shown to be part of a normal and continuous development.
If this work were to run to a thousand pages, instead of less than one hundred, I could tell the whole wonderful story in fascinating detail. But we have seen enough here to convince any person; and other books develop the more important points. Moral law slowly dawns in the mind of the human race as a regulation of a man's relations with his fellows in the interest of social life. It is quite independent of religion, since it has entirely different roots in human psychology. It later partly by natural development and partly owing to the increasing ambition of priests, blends with religion. But it is still overwhelmingly human and utilitarian. Justice, honor, truthfulness, honesty, fidelity, and hospitality are its main lines. It is only at a late stage that it begins to include "virtues" and "vices" the utilitarian character of which can be disputed; and this development is plainly due in part to the—to the primitive mind—mysterious "uncleanness" of a woman's sexual physiology and to priestly calculations. Consecrated men and women find this an effective way of standing out from and above the common crowd. Virginity becomes the most shining of virtues.
We now see plainly how superfluous is the work of moral philosophers. This, they will say, is a "superficial" sketch, and they are "Profound." It is wholly untrue. What I have given the reader is a compilation of the most essential facts about the evolution of morals (never noticed by these theorists) and a series of the most rigorous and logical deductions from them. What they give their readers is an analysis of the "conscience" of a highly cultivated and refined modern man, in whose mind the influences of Christianity and a dozen other religions are confused with plain moral law.
It may be said that I explain the conscience of the savage and they explain the conscience of civilized man. They will themselves say—I know the rhetoric well—that it is quite natural that the more obtuse and coarser mind of the savage should first perceive the less refined and more utilitarian aspects of moral law, but as the mind of man becomes more sensitive and receptive, it perceives the finer shades of this august reality which has been slowly breaking through the mists. We now, they say, recognize "self-regarding" virtues, as well as rules of social value; and these, they insist, are completely inexplicable on the social or utilitarian theory of morals, yet are the most precious elements of character.
In this series of works I am not concerned with philosophers, as such. Not one of them is an orthodox Christian, and very few of them believe in any kind of God whom the plain man can understand. But the mysticism of philosophy in this respect encourages those who believe in God to suppose that in conscience we really have a reality, a fact, which science cannot explain, and which points, as Eucken says, to a spiritual and supernatural order. So let us work out the matter candidly.
At the time when I was a professor of philosophy (moral as well as mental) and a priest, it was my duty to know every detail of this controversy about ethics; and the controversy was then at its height, on account of the recent rise and rapid spread of Agnosticism. You cannot, on Agnostic principles, maintain the fine "self-regarding virtues," it was said to Rationalists. Since a self-regarding virtue obviously means one that does not affect our fellows, for good or evil, how could we urge it on social principles?