28o Intranational and International Ethics [June-September 



Let US first look at the Status of intranational morality. The 

 ethical relations among civilized fellow-men, united by bonds of 

 race, nation or country, are firmly established. Justice and duty 

 are deeply rooted conceptions, the compelHng force of which is 

 spontaneously recognized by all normal members of the individual 

 Community; the small fraction of dissenters consists of defectives 

 and criminals. Sympathy, kindness, altruism and self-sacrifice are 

 not enforceable human virtues, but are nevertheless profoundly 

 appreciated and admired by the individuals of all civiHzed nations. 

 Honesty is an indispensable virtue. In parenthesis I may, how- 

 ever, say here that to my knowledge "honor" is not among the 

 general precepts of ethics. It is an artifact; it is mostly an arti- 

 ficial virtue of a class which considers itself as being above the 

 simple requirements of justice and duty. It is not an unusual 

 occurrence that in the name of honor a man may slay with relative 

 impunity a fellow-man whose home life he has dishonored. 



From Sokrates to our day students of moral philosophy offered 

 various theories concerning the nature of the principles underly- 

 ing the "science of conduct." I shall not discuss the merits of the 

 theories of Hedonism or Utilitarianism, the Law of God or the 

 Categorical Imperative; they do not concern us here. But I have 

 to refer to one theory which was not received with great favor and 

 which had only a short life of populär existence. In the latter half 

 of the last Century, under the powerful influence of Darwin's 

 theory of natural selection in the domain of biology, a systematic 

 attempt was made by some philosophers (Herbert Spencer and 

 others) to look upon ethics as a purely biological phenomenon. 

 Family ties of lower animals, it was thought, developed into the 

 ethics of civilized nations. Whether on account of the feverish 

 social and altruistic activities which have been going on in the last 

 decade or two and for which a biologic theory of ethics could hardly 

 have served as a sufficient Stimulus ; or whether on account of the 

 general decadence in populär enthusiasm for the theory of natural 

 selection in general, the fact is that the theory of biologic origin of 

 ethics seems to have been generally abandoned in recent years. 

 But whatever we may think philosophically regarding the nature 

 of fundamental origin of ethics, we can not deny that morality 



