Relativity in Ethics 463 



found that the letter alone killeth; on the other hand we 

 have found that however useful the letter may be in the 

 teaching process, the spirit can and must transcend it. That 

 is to say, our moralities turn out to be in effect attainable 

 through a great variety of theologies and religions, and in 

 spite of them — and without them, too. 



Morals and Beliefs 



Consideration has of course been given to the evolution 

 of morals, as a historical process. The comparative study 

 of religions and laws has thus brought out a mass of 

 information regarding the origins of values under a great 

 variety of circumstances. The earlier studies under the in- 

 fluence of Darwinism naturally sought adaptive signifi- 

 cance in institutions. They tried to explain laws and cus- 

 toms in terms of special conditions and needs, from the point 

 of view of fitness. We find, however, that in addition to 

 vestigeal relics of usage that at one time had meaning but 

 now no longer count, there have been also usages and cus- 

 toms which we can understand only as application of ** be- 

 liefs." Many of these seem to us crude and superstitious, 

 but they nevertheless had validity and significance for those 

 who came under the special influence. 



Many burial customs, for example, in which food and 

 weapons, dogs and horses, and even favorite wives, were 

 interred with the dead, had meaning only in relation to what 

 people thought about life and death, about the nature of the 

 soul and of the gods. They could not be interpreted as 

 having " survival value " in a Darwinian sense, in terms of 

 economic or social advantage to the individual or to the 

 group, or in terms of physiological value. To this day and 

 in our own land people associate with the burial ritual so 

 much of the primitive that we become easy victims of un- 

 scrupulous exploitation at the hands of morticians and their 

 camp followers. It is nevertheless perfectly clear, to any 

 who will look at the matter objectively, that however intense 



