264 UNIVERSAL EVOLUTION 



A fixed categorical imperative, a prescribed written 

 code, made to fit the a priori ideas of one social unit in 

 one locality, has never become the guide of men in all 

 communities, everywhere and under all conditions. Nor 

 can reason determine beforehand, by a written pre- 

 scription, the morality of a future action, because it can- 

 not anticipate all the possible conditions of the entire en- 

 vironment, to which it may be necessary, at another 

 time, for man to readjust himself in all his heterogene- 

 ous relations. Man's moral relations to his fellows, in 

 times of peace, and good will, are altogether different 

 from what they are, in a state of war, towards his war- 

 like enemies. His attitude towards his friends, is neces- 

 sarily different from his attitude toward one who washes 

 to murder, or rob him, and both may be moral. The 

 divine prohibition of pork, as a diet in Palestine, may 

 have been correct, because of its supposed injurious ef- 

 fects there, but not in Europe, where it does not cause 

 leprosy. 



In a tribe living in the lowest degree of savagery, it 

 was a rule that when a wife died, it was the duty of a 

 husband to go to another tribe, and kill a female mem- 

 ber of it. It is said, that unless the husband performed 

 this divine command, he pined away and died. This 

 rule was part of the moral code of that tribe. Civilized 

 man regards this as not only immoral, but criminal. 

 But all the tribes of savages regarded it as moral. The 

 rule is always abrogated, when such tribes grow to re- 

 gard human life as valuable, worth more living than 

 dead. They, in time, grow out of such horrible moral 

 ideas. The similarity however of the morality, between 

 this rule of a tribe of savages, and the international code 

 of civilized countries, in making war upon each other, 

 for the acquisition of territory, will be apparent to the 

 thinker. 



