The New Morality 



And let them learn to respect themselves as worthy 

 and indispensable members of this great Body. 

 Thus will be established a true Morality — a morality 

 far more searching, more considerate of others, 

 more adaptive and more genuine than that of 

 the present day — a morality, we may say, of 

 common-sense. 



For it may indeed be said that Morality — taking 

 a downright and almost physiological view of it — 

 is simply abundance of life. That is, that when a 

 man has so abounding and vital an inner nature 

 that his sympathies and activities overflow the 

 margin of his own petty days and personal ad- 

 vantage, he is by that fact entering the domain 

 of morality. Before that time and while limited 

 to the personal organism, the creative life in each 

 being is either non-moral like that of the animals, 

 or simply selfish like that of the immature man ; 

 but when it overflows this limit it necessarily becomes 

 social, and moves to the support and considera- 

 tion of the neighbour. Having formerly found 

 its complete activity in the sustentation of the 

 personal self it now spreads its helpful energies 

 into the lives of the other selves around. Altru- 

 ism, in fact, in its healthy forms, is the overflow 

 of abounding vitality. It is a morality without 

 a code, and happily free fron limiting formulae.^ 



1 This morality, indeed, may be said to be implicit in much 

 of the teaching of Christ ; yet, curiously enough, it has never 

 been seriously adopted by the Churches. And as to the regard 

 for animals as ends in themselves, the Reman Catholic Church, 

 I believe, positively repudiates any such attitude, 



