Biology's Contribution to a Theory of Morals 101 



many persons were there in the whole United States 

 three years ago who did not fully believe that such a 

 conflict as is raging to-day in Europe was both physic- 

 ally and morally impossible or at most only remotely 

 probable? Shall we, men of science, especially drilled 

 in the difficult art of impersonal observation and fore- 

 casting, fail to learn from the many lessons now before 

 us how mighty and ineradicable are the great primal 

 instincts of the human species? Is an era of priestly 

 and ecclesiastical domination more inconceivable to-day 

 than, a few months ago, was such an outbreak of the 

 fighting impulse as we are now witnessing? Any one 

 disposed to scoff at this query would do well to turn 

 an attentive eye upon the indications of a renewal of 

 life in quarters where religious dogma is still enforced 

 by churchly authority. 



Concerned as I am here with the problem of morals, 

 I would have preferred not to touch this chronic open 

 sore on the body of civilization, this conflict between 

 science and theology. Nor should I do so but for the 

 fact now coming into clearer outline than ever before, 

 that it is impossible to treat the problem of morals 

 with anything approaching adequacy without passing 

 into the domain of religion. This truth is now coming 

 into clearness just because the problems of both morals 

 and religion are getting themselves more scientifically 

 treated than ever before. 



In the earlier stages of the effort toward a science of 



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morals, in the purely analytic stage, when morals and 



