88 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



in this country that he is not accompanied by a clergyman, and 

 he dies with the professions of piety and religious faith on his 

 lips. Our penal institutions are filled with religious believers, 

 and it is rare, in fact, that such men are not nominal members of 

 churches, or at least have been at some time in their lives. I do 

 not mention this fact to intimate that religious education or belief 

 tends to promote immorality, for it does not ; but rather to show 

 that religious belief does not necessarily promote morality, no 

 more than does the absence of such belief tend to promote immo- 

 rality 



If a system of ethics and morality founded upon a purely 

 human basis, and having no reference to any deity or future life 

 whatever, is a religion, then Confucianism is a religion. But I 

 do not know of any definition of the term that would include such 

 a system. 



The simple assertion, by those claiming authority on a subject 

 that lies beyond the sphere of demonstration or proof one way or 

 the other, has either to be accepted as a fact or repudiated as not 

 proved. In the realm of religious dogmas it has been held to be 

 good logic that when a proposition can not be disproved that it 

 stands as proved. By this logic religions have been established. 

 But in the matter of ethics the case is different. This comes 

 within the scope of experience and demonstration, and is the out- 

 growth of experiment. There is no absolute standard of morality, 

 what is construed as such being a relative condition, and re- 

 garded as good or bad, according to the state of civilization and 

 educational standard by which actions are measured. What is 

 regarded as perfect conduct in one age or under one environment 

 may be rightly condemned under a higher development of the 

 moral sense as a feeble attempt at morality. 



What is called conscience can not be set up as a guide in the 

 matter, for it is but the result of the mode of education. One 

 man's conscience will approve of a given course, when another 

 under a better social and political education will repudiate it as 

 vicious. Among the lower orders of savages and uncivilized men 

 there is apparently no moral standard observed. With the lower 

 animal kingdom questions of priority and individual rights are 

 settled, not by any tribunal in equity, but by the measure of 

 physical strength. And what are considered the cardinal points 

 in moral and ethical systems, as set forth in the decalogue of the 

 Jews and in the corresponding codes of other ancient religions, 

 are but the embodiment of the results of experience in the earlier 

 developments of civilization When men first began to acquire 

 property by industry or cunning, they found it inconvenient to 

 have others appropriate the results of such thrift, and perhaps 

 the first moral obligation recognized was the right to property ; 



