Note 16 — Chapter VIII · CONCLUSION

Finally, it is very necessary that the origin of morality (as indicated by Spencer in his Data of Ethics, by Darwin in his Descent of Man, by Prince Kropotkin in his Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution, and by Dr. C. W. Saleeby in his Evolution: The Master-Key) should be better understood. Hitherto the question of morality has been dealt with on wrong lines,16 and this applies to the teaching not only of Christian but also of non-Christian religionists. It applies to the works of those speculative philosophers who have denied the empirical origin of man’s moral feeling, and who have had recourse to subtle and unconvincing theories in order to assign a supernatural origin to the moral senses. These thinkers, in attempting to explain the “distinction of man,” the “why of existence,” and the “aim of nature,” set themselves the hopeless task of explaining a process which entails untold suffering upon sentient beings, and in which the modern Rationalist is unable to discover any ethical principle whatsoever.