482 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



is charged with materialism ; and breathe that atmosphere we must, 

 whether Ave will or no. 



Now the question which I would invite my readers to ponder is, 

 What, in such an age, is the prospect before us as regards those ethical 

 conceptions upon which society has as yet existed ? Can they live in 

 this blighted air ? And, without them, what will become of the moral 

 life of mankind ? Do not let us mistake the fact. We are living in 

 a crisis of the world's history, a great crisis, for it is a moral crisis. 

 Fifty years ago Jouffroy wrote his celebrated article, " Comment finis- 

 sent les dogmes." He had in view religious dogmas only, and espe- 

 cially the distinctive tenets of Christianity. He might now, were he 

 alive, discuss the question in a much wider sense. Philosophy, as well 

 as religion, has its traditional bases. Certain it is, as mere matter of 

 history, apart from all controversy, that the ethical ideas which have 

 hitherto ruled the conduct of mankind, have rested upon certain meta- 

 physical credenda. As certain is it that the postulates of the old 

 philosophy— a First Cause, by which the universe was brought into 

 existence, and that for a good end, the personality of man, his limited 

 and conditioned liberty and moral responsibility, the immateriality 

 and immortality of the Ego, the absolute nature of ethics — certain it 

 is that these things are now very commonly put aside as antiquated 

 delusions. Kant is no less discredited than St. Paul in the eyes of 

 the prophets of materialism. The practical reason fares as badly as 

 the Christian revelation at the hands of the sages of positivism. Nay, 

 every newspaper hack of Continental Liberalism is ready with his gibe 

 at M. do PAbsolu and Mdlle. 1'Amc. In the novel, in the play, in the 

 babble of the drawing-room or the dinner-table, the most august and 

 venerable of ethical doctrines are called in question and denied. Even 

 the supreme authority of conscience is impugned. To its " Thou must " 

 the answer is prompt : " On what compulsion must I ? tell me that ! " 

 Its "dogmatism " is contemptuosly rejected, for physical science — the 

 only science — is supposed to have given an explanation of it, fatal 

 alike to its authoritativeness and to its coerciveness. No longer may 

 we account of it with St. Paul, as the divine law written in the heart ; 

 no longer with Kant, as the law laid by a man's higher self upon him- 

 self. Has not Mr. Herbert Spencer resolved its obligation into a long- 

 sighted selfishness ? its sanction into a brain-track ? Certain it is that 

 every civilization which the world has as yet known, has been reared 

 upon an ethical, not a physical foundation. A common belief in dog- 

 mas of morality — I use the word dogmas advisedly — has hitherto been 

 the very condition of social cohesion. To speak of Europe only, its 

 public order has ever been based upon the conviction, deep down in 

 the hearts of all, at the very root of their moral and spiritual being, 

 that man was encompassed by duties — duties which, however grudg- 

 ingly performed or brutally violated, in countless instances, were every- 

 where undoubtingly recognized as the divinely imposed laws of life ; 



