Yarros, Victor S.

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NATURAL MORALITY, RELIGION AND UNSETTLED PROBLEMS. 245and the Bible" he ought before all to apply morality to this task:that is. be fair, and not impute things to the Bible which are nowherefound in it. If any one had never heard of the Bible before andwould read some of the statements Mr. VVestermayr has made aboutit, he would get the impression that it is the most immoral andbestial book that has ever seen the light, and that every copy of itought to be destroyed. The article under' discussion is representa-tive of a type of minds, who after losing belief in the Bible asa divine inspiration—the most deplorable and unhistorical dogmaever made—now fall into the same unhistorical and uncritical atti-tude themselves and refuse to find anvthing redeeming in it.NATURAL MORALITY, RELIGION AND SOMEUNSETTLED PROBLEMS.EV VICTOR S. YARROS.TWO admirable articles appeared in 'Hie Open Court for Sep-tember, 1916, which deserve wide circulation. It is a pity thattens of thousands of conventional moralists and theologians cannotbe somehow induced to digest, ponder and honestly meet the argu-ments presented by Messrs. Lyman and Westermayr in their respec-tive articles on "Natural Morality" and "Moral Law and the Bible."Not that these writers will claim striking originality ; what they sayhas been said before, many times. But what they say is said sosimply, clearly, reasonably, that it is calculated to impress minds thatare repelled by more aggressive polemics, or minds that cannot bereached by metaphysical subtleties.But the very reasonableness and persuasiveness of these articlesinvite certain frank comments and questions. I wish to call theattention of the writers, and of the readers of this magazine, tocertain assumptions that are often made and to certain problemsthat remain unsolved in the ablest expositions of natural moralityand scientific religion.Of course, all religions and moral systems are in one sense"natural." Nothing that exists is supernatural. The distinctionbetween the natural and the miraculous, or supernatural, spells in-tellectual babyhood. It was, however, perfectly natural for theslowly ascending human race to make this distinction. Nothing inthe crudest religion or mythology is unnatural or strange. We cansee now, in the light of several sciences and of contemporaneous246 THE OPEN COURT.studies of primitive tribes, that everything we call superstitionseemed almost self-evident at certain stages of intellectual develop-ment. Man has created all the gods he has worshiped, and he hashad to create them in his own image. He has peopled the worldwith angels, fairies, etc., and could not help doing so. Every beliefrests on supposed facts and supposed evidence. If to-day, manyof us are able to rise to higher conceptions, and to form mature,worthy ideas of the universe of which we are part, we owe this tovast accumulations of facts, to the experience of ages, to discov-eries and inventions, and to the reasoning of many acute andbrilliant minds.If, then, religion and morality have evolved naturally—nay,inevitably—precisely as all other institutions and doctrines and sys-tems have evolved, it follows that many of our present conceptionsare in no sense final, and that dogmatism is unwarrantable in anydirection.We have no right, scientifically speaking, to dogmatize on thestatus of woman, or on the relations between the sexes. We can-not, for example, say too confidently that natural morality andnatural religion "enjoin" upon us the monogamic family. It isquite conceivable that the future will witness profound changes inthe family. We cannot flatter ourselves with the belief that thecivilized and moral races are monogamic. The horror we call "thesocial evil"-—prostitution—and the daily testimony of the divorcecourts ; the headlines that stare us in the face every day telling ofvice, immorality, adultery, promiscuity, etc., forbid any complacentassumption as to the actual prevalence of monogamy. Moreover,we know that not one case in ten is reported or discovered, and wealso know that in millions of instances freedom from immorality orsin merely means lack of opportunity. The sins of the imagination,as Lecky wrote, are as real as the sins of actuality. Jesus was rightabout adultery.It is not, surely, a mere accident that pure-minded and noble-hearted social reformers like St. Simon, Fourier, Robert Owen, andothers, should have been led to form "heretical" ideas concerningsex relations and the family. These heresies discredited their eco-nomic and social teaching with many, but, while we may deplorethis, we cannot wish that they had suppressed their convictions onthe question of marriage and the family. If they erred, candiddiscussion is the only true remedy for error, the only preventiveof the growth of error.Nor can we dogmatize on the question of crime und punish-NATURAL MORALITY^ RELIGION AND UNSETTLED PROBLEMS. 247ment. We still murder the murderer. Is capital puuishment reallynecessary as a deterrent? Is it only a means of discipline, or is itprompted by the savage desire for revenge ? No society has adoptedthe doctrine of non-resistance to evil as Jesus preached it, and asTolstoy, in our own day, so dogmatically defended it. We judge, wepunish, we inflict cruel penalties. Suppose the non-resistants hadthe power and opportunity to experiment with the abolition of allpunishment and restraint ; would the thoughtful among us encour-age them to make the experiment? Would not lynch law and mobrule straightway take the place of legal and judicial punishment?Bernard Shaw seriously asks us in his latest "Preface" to give non-resistance a trial. He says that modern science has confirmed theviews of Jesus regarding crime and punishment. Perhaps it maybe said with justice that science has condemned capital punishment.But has science condemned all punishment? If so, where andwhen? Will Mr. Shaw tell us?Manifestly, trials, prisons and executions do not fully deter.But it is a transparent fallacy to conclude that they have no deter-rent efifect whatever. Many are undoubtedly influenced and checkedin their anti-social careers by the fear of exposure and punishment,even though a few are either too desperate or too stupid to reflecton the chance of punishment.If restraint and punishment are essential to the process of so-cializing and improving the individual, of fitting him for the betterstate, then non-resistance would be a reactionary and destructive,not a progressive and constructive, social- policy. Will non-resistanceever be safe, or possible? I venture to doubt it, but this questionis irrelevant and unimportant. When Shaw asks us to give non-resistance a trial to-day, with human nature as we know it, wesimply stare and wonder at his naivete. We certainly find nothingin natural morality or natural religion to require the practice ofnon-resistance.One more question may be touched upon—man's relation to the"lower animals." What do natural religion and morality have tosay concerning this? The Bible is not wholly silent on the subject,but it does not take us very far. Have we the right to kill animalsfor food? Have we the right to breed them for slaughter? Are thevegetarians right, or are they illogical and sentimental? The uni-verse is what it is ; throughout nature—"red in tooth and claw"—life feeds upon life, and creatures prey and slay in order to live andreproduce themselves. But is this tragic fact—tragic to some of us248 THE OPEN COURT.humans at our stage of evolution—sufficient to justify to our ownconsciences our treatment of animals?There was an extraordinary fallacy in Huxley's famous dis-tinction between "the cosmic process" and "the ethical process."Huxley was apparently blind to the unity of nature. Although anaggressive agnostic, he categorically asserted that man is at warwith nature and must combat the cosmic process. As if this werea possible enterprise ! Huxley overlooked the evidence as to theexistence of what he called the "ethical process," in the animal king-dom and among the primitive savages. But, while Huxley waswrong in his attempted distinction, for man is a part of nature andhas no instincts, proclivities and sentiments that are not "cosmic,"he dimly perceived the fact that man is ascending and improvinghis environment by emphasizing, developing and applying his socialinstincts and curbing his anti-social ones. We have elevated com-petition to a higher plane, and cooperation, or association, is moreand more taking the place of strife. It is folly to suppose thatstrife and struggle can ever be eliminated, but it is not folly to holdthat we can further refine the struggle for life. Should not, then,this process of purification and elevation extend to our treatmentof animals?Natural morality, to repeat, is tentative. It has grown upslowly, and is still growing. We can explain "naturally" why wecondemn lying, slander, theft, brutal physical assaults, and the like.Other things we cannot readily explain, and we may even entertaindoubts concerning their legitimacy and necessity, or their perma-nence. Natural morality is not merely a body of doctrines ; it alsofurnishes a point of view, a manner of approach. If it fails toteach us to treat every problem scientifically and historically—torealize that no field or corner of human conduct is exempt fromnatural law—it has failed in its essential part.MISCELLANEOUS.APHRODITE AS MOTHER GODDESS.In the volume on Greek and Roman Mythology (edited by William S.Fox of Princeton) of the excellent series of the Mythology of All Races, pub-lished in thirteen volumes by the Marshall Jones Company of Boston, a briefchapter is given to each of the major Hellenic divinities. The treatment ofAphrodite in art is thus briefly summarized:"Through three or four centuries the Greeks were slowly evolving an

Natural Morality, Religion and Some Unsettled Problems.

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Natural Morality, Religion and Some Unsettled Problems.

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