No Refuge but in Truth | Page 8

of mystery, did nothing to clear our minds upon the subject. His apologue of Dives and Lazarus shows that to Him as to us the other world was a realm of the imagination.
Is there anything in man not physical, or apparently explained and limited by the transient conditions and necessities of his present state, anything which gives an inkling of immortality? Our utilitarian morality is the offspring and adjunct of our condition here. But is there not an aspiration to character which points to something more spiritual and higher than conformity to the utilitarian code? Heroism and self-sacrifice are not utilitarian.
We can hardly allow the investigation to be closed by the mere mention of the talismanic formulary Evolution. There may be something still to be said on that subject. Evolution cannot have evolved itself, nor does it seem capable of infallible demonstration. It no doubt postulates vast spaces of time for its action. But within the space of time of which we in any way have knowledge, apparently no case of spontaneous evolution has taken place. Rudimentary likeness between the frame of the ape and that of man seems hardly in itself a proof of the generation of man from the ape.
On no subject, however, does one who is not a man of science or a philosopher feel more intensely his deficiency, and his need of having his paths lighted by the perfectly free while reverent inquiry, to pray for which has been the object of these letters.
August 11th, 1907.

VII.
IS THERE TO BE A REVOLUTION IN ETHICS?
A revolution in theology and in our conception of the government of the universe such as we are undergoing is sure to draw with it a revolutionary movement in ethics. There lies before me a review article giving an account of a number of books on ethics which are widely at variance, it appears, with the ethics of Christianity. The general tendency of the authors seems to be to reject altogether the Christian type of character as artificial and weak, and to aim at substituting for it something more robust and, it is assumed, more in accordance with nature. One theorist is represented as regarding humanity in its present form only as transient material out of which is to be wrought the "Superman." In what respect, so far as our conceptions extend, has Christian ethic failed? It has given birth to the patriot as well as to the martyr, to the virtues of the softer as well as to those of the stronger sex. Communities which have kept its rules, as well as individuals, have been happy.
The Christian ideal of character and life went essentially unchanged through the violence of the Middle Ages and the vices of the Papacy. It was somewhat perverted by asceticism; but it was radically the same character in Anselm or in St. Louis, as it is in their counterparts now. Nor does it seem to lose by renunciation of theological dogma. The moral principles and aspirations of good free thinkers or Positivists remain still essentially Christian.
The ethical ideal which is now being set up against the Christian apparently, is that of the Greeks. In literature and art Greece, or rather Athens, or, to speak still more correctly, a limited number of free citizens in Athens, was pre-eminent: but its pre-eminence, if we may trust its own moralists, hardly extended to morals.
May 3rd, 1908.

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