7 28 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



sition of the body in the grave. There are many who hold that 

 both the content and the impulse of ethical life are given by re- 

 ligion ; that man can neither know nor do right without divine 

 aid ; and that human virtue, apart from the supernatural element, 

 is a delusion and a snare, since it allures men to a fatal self- 

 dependence by holding out the false hope that they can be really 

 good without divine aid. This is the annihilation of morality in 

 the ordinary sense of the term. 



On the other hand, the opinion is held that religion and morals 

 are wholly distinct, neither in any wise affecting the fundamental 

 conceptions or the practical development of the other. According 

 to this view, the two start from different points, have regard to 

 different objects, look to different aims, and follow different meth- 

 ods. Sometimes this distinctness is represented as belonging only 

 to the ideal conception of religion and ethics, sometimes it is 

 claimed as a characteristic of the historical development of the 

 two. Religion, it is said, deals with God, ethics with man ; and 

 this difference, it is held, severs the two by a world-wide interval. 

 Such a position may be maintained both by those who accept and 

 by those who reject a supernatural divine revelation of truth. A 

 believer in revelation might hold the atonement of Christ to be a 

 distinctively religious fact, while he might regard the ethical 

 teaching of Jesus or Paul as the product of human experience. 



Still another view considers the two as different indeed in 

 origin and modes of development, but, since both are essential ele- 

 ments of life existing from the beginning, as acted on and inter- 

 penetrated each by the other. It may be held, for example, that 

 the posture of mind necessary to produce ethical convictions is, 

 if not created, at least modified by the religious theory, the con- 

 sciousness of the presence of the Deity deepening the instinct or 

 conviction of duty toward one's fellow-men ; or that, in the inverse 

 direction, the sentiment of duty toward the Deity is quickened by 

 the feeling of human obligation ; or, again, that the hope of reward 

 or the fear of punishment from the supernatural powers may fur- 

 nish a strong motive for right-doing ; or that the ideals of duty, 

 constantly transcending practice, and embodied in the Deity, may 

 be an ethically elevating influence. According to this view, the 

 present ethical religious thought of the world is the product of a 

 long series of interactions between ethical and religious ideas 

 which have grown up more or less independently. 



In order to test the correctness of these various opinions, we 

 must consider briefly the history of the development of men's 

 religious and moral ideas and practice. Our knowledge of this 

 history can be only a general one : we have not the data necessary 

 to describe the beginning of any line in human life ; we do not 

 know with certainty how man formed his first notion of the super- 



