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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



of moral beauty and ugliness, is obviously in no 

 way affected by the abbreviation or the prolonga- 

 tion of his conscious life ; nor by the mere exist- 

 ence or non-existence of anything not included 

 in Nature ; nor, so long as he believes that ac- 

 tions have consequences, does it matter to him 

 what connection there may be between these 

 actions and other phenomena of Nature. 



The assertion that morality is in any way de- 

 pendent upon the views respecting certain philo- 

 sophical problems a person may chance to hold, 

 produces the same effect upon my mind as if one 

 should say that a man's vision depends on his 

 theory of light; or that he has no business to 

 be sure that ginger is hot in the mouth unless he 

 has formed definite views, in the first place, as 

 to the nature of ginger, and, secondly, as to 

 whether he has or has not a sensitive soul. 



Social morality belongs to the realm of in- 

 ductive and deductive investigation. Given a 

 society of human beings under certain circum- 

 stances: and the question whether a particular 

 action on the part of one of the members of that 

 society will tend to the increase of the general 

 happiness or not is a question of natural knowl- 

 edge, and, as such, is a perfectly legitimate sub- 

 ject of scientific inquiry. And the morality or 

 immorality of the action will depend upon the 

 answer which the question receives. 



If it can be shown, by observation or experi- 

 ment, that theft, murder, and adultery, do not 

 tend to diminish the happiness of society, then, 

 in the absence of any but natural knowledge, 

 they are not social immoralities. 



It does not follow, however, that they might 

 not be personal immoralities. Without commit- 

 ting myself to any theory of the origin of the 

 moral sense, or even as to the existence of any 

 such special sense, I may suggest that it is quite 

 conceivable that discords and harmonies may 

 affect the congeries of feelings to which we give 

 the name, as they do others. 



I see no reason for doubting that the beauty 

 of holiness and the ugliness of sin are, to a great 

 many minds, no mere metaphors, but feelings 

 as real and as intense as those with which the 

 beauty or ugliness of form or color fills the ar- 

 tist-mind, and that they are as independent of 

 intellectual beliefs, and even of education, as are 

 all the true sesthetic powers and impulses. 



On the other hand, I do not doubt the existence 

 of persons, like the hero of the " Fatal Boots," 

 devoid of any sense of moral beauty or ugliness, 

 and for them personal morality has no existence. 

 They may offend, but they cannot sin ; they may 



be sorry for having stolen or murdered, because 

 society punishes them for their social immorali- 

 ties, but they are incapable of repentance. 



Before going further, I think it may be need- 

 ful to discriminate between religion and theology. 



I object to the very general use of the terms 

 religion and theology, as if they were synony- 

 mous, or indeed had anything whatever to do with 

 one another. Religion is the affair of the affec- 

 tions, theology of the intellect. The religious 

 man loves an ideal perfection, which may be 

 natural or non-natural ; the theologian expounds 

 the attributes of what he terms "supernatural" 

 Being as so many scientific truths, the conse- 

 quences of which work into the general scheme 

 of Nature, and are there discernible by ordinary 

 methods of investigation. What the theologian 

 affirms may be put in this way : that beyond the 

 nalura naturata, mirrored or made by the natural 

 operations of the human mind, there is a natura 

 naturans, sufficient knowledge of which is attain- 

 able only through the channel of revelation. 



Now, I think it cannot be doubted that both 

 religion and theology, as thus defined, have exer- 

 cised, and must exercise, a profound influence on 

 morality. For it may be that the object of a 

 man's religion — the ideal which he worships — is 

 an ideal of sensual enjoyment, or of domination, 

 or of the development of all his faculties toward 

 perfection, or of self-anDihilation, or of benevo- 

 lence ; and his personal morality will, in part, 

 contribute largely to the formation of his ideal, 

 and will, in part, be swayed and bent until it 

 harmonizes with that ideal. 



Moreover, it is clear that a man's theology 

 may give him such views of the action of the 

 natura naturans as will profoundly modify or 

 even reverse his social morality. 



He may see ground for believing that conduct 

 of evil erfect upon society, which is part of the 

 natura naturata, is in harmony M'ith the laws of 

 action of the natura naturans ; and that, as the 

 rewards and punishments of men are but slight 

 and temporary, while those inflicted by the great- 

 er power behind the natura naturata are grievous 

 and endless, common prudence may dictate obe- 

 dience to the stronger. And history proves that 

 there is no social crime that man can commit 

 which has not been dictated by theology and 

 committed on theological grounds. On the other 

 hand, the belief that the divine commands are 

 identical with the laws of social morality has lent 

 infinite strength to the latter in all ages. 



In like manner it seems to me impossible to 

 over-estimate the influence of speculative beliefs 



