The New Morality 



believe in the letter of Morality, and yet unable to 

 find its spirit ! 



It is here, then, that the New Morality comes 

 in, as more or less clearly understood and ex- 

 pressed by the progressive sections to-day. Modern 

 Socialism, in effect, taking up a position in its way 

 somewhat similar to that of Eastern philosophy, 

 says : Morality in its essence is not a code, but 

 simply the realisation of the Common Life ; x 

 and that is a thing which is not foreign and alien 

 to humanity, but very germane and natural to it 

 a thing so natural that without doubt it would be 

 more in evidence than it is, did not the institu- 

 tions and teachings of Western civilisation tend 

 all along to deny and disguise it. To liberate 

 this instinct of the Common Life, freeing it from 

 hard and cramping rules, and to let it take its own 

 form or forms grafted on and varied of course 

 by the personal and selective element of Affection 

 and Sympathy is the hope that lies before the 

 world to-day for the solution of all sorts of moral 

 and social problems. 



And the more this position is thought over, 

 the more, I believe, will it commend itself. The 

 sense of organic unity, of the common welfare, the 

 instinct of Humanity, or of general helpfulness, 

 are things which run in all directions through the 

 very fibre of our individual and social life Just 

 as they do through that of the gregarious animals. 



1 I need hardly say that this does not mean, as Nietzsche so 

 often and sardonically suggests, the realisation of the common-place 

 life, but something very different. 



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