December, 1927 



EVOLUTION 



Page Seven 



Ethics Coming of Age 



An Informal Interview witk Harry Allen Overslreet, Professor of Philosophy, College of the City of New York 



By Barrow Lyons 



ly/fEN and women — particularly young men and women 

 — more and more are losing the ancient attitude 

 toward sin. Perhaps it is a good thing. Let's talk 

 about it. 



Old ethical systems which attached a great deal of 

 importance to the consequences of sin are today up for 

 appraisal. In a large measure they are the outgrowth 

 of experience under very limited conditions combined 

 with some delightfully naive ideas of what the world 

 is made of. 



These rule of thumb ethical systems of the ancient 

 days to some extent met the situations they were intended 

 to meet, but in a great many ways they failed, just as 

 medicine often failed because we did not have science 

 enough to know how to use it. 



A significant thing about ethical judgments is that 

 they do not have the immediate testing that judgments 

 in the material world have. One makes a bad tool 

 and soon finds out that it will not work; but it may take 

 several centuries to find out how bad an ethical rule 

 is. In ethical life there is bound to be a hangover from 

 the older generation of ethical rules never fully tested 

 out. This is true in all our ethical relationships — in 

 politics, sex judgments, business judgments and religious 

 attitudes. 



Loaded with Emotion 



Ethical judgments always are loaded with a certain 

 emotional content. When the tribe believes a certain 

 action is righteous it develops a strong emotional atti- 

 tude toward that act, and any deviation from the code 

 is regarded with the greatest indignation. Ethical judg- 

 ments have usually been couched in absolutes. They 

 are not like automobiles- — the style of which changes 

 from year to year. In the realm of mechanical things 

 we are quite willing to discard old-fashioned tools. We 

 are not at all willing to discard old-fashioned tools in 

 ethical life — but we should be, when better tools come 

 to hand. 



Another difficulty in ethical thinking is that the rules 

 usually are inculcated in childhood. Children are not 

 old enough to make independent judgments, so they are 

 told what to do. They are instructed to eat in certain 

 ways; they are threatened with punishments and warned 

 of sins. Children grow up with ethical assumptions that 

 are supposed to be accepted without question. But it 

 is nothing less than a crime against children to impress 

 them with dogmas at a time when they are helpless to 

 protect their minds. 



Ethics a Practical Matter 



The question is, how can we modify that attitude? 

 How can we bring a scientific attitude of mind to bear 

 upon morality. Perhaps the first great change in think- 

 ing will be in ceasing, as most of our present generation 

 do, to regard ethical judgments as somehow handed 

 down from on high. In this respect, the newer genera- 

 tion, however, is freer than the old. It is progressing 

 beyond the authoritative conception of ethics toward a 

 rational conception. It is taking long strides from the 

 ethics of the immutable Ten Commandments to the ethics 

 of scientific insight. 



As a matter of fact, all purely authoritative views to- 

 day are gradually disappearing, except among supersti- 

 tious and ignorant people. Just as physical science is 

 teaching us to take care of our stomachs, so ethical sci- 

 ence is teaching us to keep our group life healthy. 



Just what is good or bad for society, of course, is a 

 -natter for interpretation. Perhaps it can be translated 

 into terms of pleasure and pain— happiness and un- 

 happiness— satisfaction and frustration. Or perhaps 

 there are other criteria. But we should see clearly that 

 there is nothing absolute in ethical judgment— that it 

 has evolved as truly as the body has evolved. Hobhouse 

 in his Morals in Evolution has made this very plain. 

 Making the Passage Now 



This present generation is actually making the passage 

 beyond the authoritative form to the scientific form of 

 ethics. My own children have been brought up to under- 

 stand that telling lies is not the sort of thing that makes 

 for the best kind of life in the kind of society in which 

 they wish to live. 



That attitude, I think, is the greatest step that has 

 been taken in social evolution. The same attitude is 

 developing in regard to the ethics of sex. Nowadays 

 ihe lid is off and we are trying to find out what is best, 

 We are trying to find out what sex relationships are 

 fine and what ugly, what make for human happiness and 

 what for misery. Sex today is the great open question. 

 Judge Lindsay's suggestion of companionate marriage 

 illustrates what is happening in the revaluation of sex 

 relationships. 



Then there is a whole new system of ethics to be 

 worked out yet, which pertains to the new environment 

 in which we live. When Moses, if he ever lived, led the 

 children of Israel to the Promised Land, there were no 

 labor troubles of our type, no Wall Street, no possibility 

 of organized finance with its great power over the lives 

 of all people, no complex international relationships, no 

 diplomacy, no treaties. Therefore the ethics accepted 

 by those following traditional religion has nothing to say 

 about these relationships. 



Question to Fundamentalists 



What does stealing mean in business? What should 

 be the ethics of profit-taking, charging interest, making 

 extravagant claims for our goods, deceitful diplomacy 

 for the sake of country? What is the correct ethics for 

 a stronger nation dominating a smaller nation for the 

 sake of carrying on our so-called civilization? 



Fundamentalists have nothing at all to offer here; and 

 when they say the Bible is all-sufficient, they simply fail 

 to recognize these gieat relationships which have come 

 into the world since the Bible was put together. 



Women, too, complicate the ethical situation. In the 

 past the world has regarded women as property. Women 

 today are recognized as human beings. Doesn't it seem 

 as though our sex ethics must be rethought in the light 

 of the claims women now make for themselves? What 

 have the Fundamentalists to say about that? 



The situation would be ridiculous if it were not, at 

 times, so tragic. 



