Morning journal and courier., 1883-07-16
AEnostfc Morality.


 Frances Power Cobbs in the Contemporary Review ]
 Evolutionism has originated the theory of hereditary conscience, and that theory has had large share in producing modern agnos- ticism, and again agnosticism is undermining practical ethics in all directions. Vernon Lee feels deeply the responsibilities of un. belief.n But are not such sentiments the last failing vail of melody from . chord al ready snapped? Let me explain why I think that almost every virtue is destined to per- ish one after another, or at least to shrink and fade, if agnosticism prevail among man. kind. Morality, on the agnostic projection, of course limits its scope to the field of hu man relations It is supposed to have risen ont of them and to have no meaning beyond them. Man has brothers and to them he owes duty. He knows nothing of father, and can owe him no duty. Altruism remains the sole virtue, piety being exploded. In the language of divines, the second great commandment of the law is still in force, but we have dispensed with the first. Here at the starting-point arises doubt whether agnosticiSm does not fling away, with the ob- ligation to love God. the best practical help toward fulfilling it's own law and loving our neighbor. The sentiments which religion teaches would appear to be the very best qualified to produce altruism. For one so amiably constituted as MT. Darwin, ready to love all his neighbors by nature, and where u0 qudEI0lS WILL LucU tO 04ublly uhL- uratly to friendly sentiments, there are at least ninety nine persons who ''love their friends and hate their enemies" " and feel at the best only indifference to those very large classes of their fellow creatures included in the stupid, the vulgar and the disagreeable. Probably every Christian and theist who has tried conscientiously to Hove his neighber as himself' has experienced an imperative necessity to call up ideas and feelings derived from his love of God to help him in the of ten difficult achievement. It has been the idea of perfect and all-adorable being, on which his heart has reposed when sickened with human falsehood and folly. It has been in the remembrance of Gods patience and forgiveness to himself that he has learned pity and pardon for his offending brothers. One of the greatest philanthropists of the past generation, Joseph Tuckerman, told Mary Carpenter that when he saw a filthy 6ie- graded creature in the streets his feelings of repulsion were almost unconquerable till he forcibly recalled to mind that God made that miserable man, and that he should meet him hereafter in heaven. Then came always, he said, 8 revulsion of feeling, and he was ena. bled to go with a chastened spirit about his work of mercy. The notion (which J have heard a noted atheist expound in lecture) that we cannot love our brothers thoroughly till we have renounced our Father and our eternal home seems tosbe simply absurd. If universal benevolence be the one supreme virtue, then again we may say, ''Si Dieu nexistait pas il faudrait linventer," if it were merely that belief in Him should help us to that virtue. But it is not only on the side of God that the morality of agnosticism stops short All the personal duties which, on the kantian system, man "owes to him. self, Y" and which were incuIcated foremost of all by the older religious ethics, because they tended directly to the supreme end of crea- tion and the approach of finite souls to di- vine holiness, these lofty personal duties are retained in the new ethics only on the secon- dary and practically wholly insufficient grounds of their subservience to the gene ral welfare of tho community.