The morning call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1878-1895, 1891-11-18
ETHICAL SCIENCE.
Professor Jordan Talks on The
Law of Right"
Interesting Discourse Before the Y. NJ. c. A.
on Moral Action and Its Effects
on Civilization.

A very large audience greeted David
Starr Jordan last evening in the lecture hall
of the Young Mems Christian Association
on Suffer street and listened with close at
tention to an ethical discourse, Astounding
in merit and pregnant with human interest
and experience.
Professor Jordan has the happy faculty
of clothing his Ideas with Emersonian terse-
ness. which is great relief from the long
drawn and tiresome style of the average
lecturer. His subject last evening was
''1he Law of Right" as applied to the adj
vance OF civilization and struggle for moral
perfection.
In opening he referred briefly to the law
governing the development of physical life
germs and the stern edicts of nature. which
are obeyed by reason of their being at the
head of, and the first principle, in all life
and development.
From this he went to human action. and
here noted the march of education and the
strides of civilization, giving as reason for
human improvement Il closer adherence to
the great law of right.
Mankind, said he, Is better off to-day than
ever before, because we have learned that
happiness and advancement come only
with the observance of law and duty.
THE RESULT OF IGNORANCE.
Sin is all unnatural growth which springs
from ignorance of ethical science. In its
fullest sense 1t means the failure of man to
realize his splendid possibilities.
To be bad is to be unnatural. If we want
TO respect man we must forget what he Is
under present conditions and think only of
what he may be-of his possibilities under
an improved system of moral development.
This system he must read and understand
for himself, for without effort there can be
no advance by succeeding generations.
Modern science holds that all Lille is bound
together by heredity, and | believe that in
its varied eyOlntions science will at last
evolve a system of historical eth cs which
will point out to humanity what it ought to
be BY what has been. 1t Is often said that
conscience is only relative; that there is no
possibility of fixing standard of right and
wrong by reason CT the "ver-chaDging con-
ditous and laws of life. What is right in
one age is wrong in another. and so who
shall say or measure the acts of all by one
rule?
RAISING THE STANDARD.
An examination of this logic shows it to
be faulty. We know that n law permitting
polygamy would be wrong, for the system
aims at the degradation of women. The
law which permitted the Patriarchs of old
10 take more than one wife was not sin in
itself.
We say that slavery was wrong, but the
Revolutionary fathers did not consider it
sin, so we see that advancement is con-
stantly raising the standard and fixing new
ideals for human attainment. a thousand
years from to-day, we, who pride ourselves
on high civilization, will be called ignorant
and half civilized-the people OF dark age
Our laws will be held up as models of in
justice and inhumanity, and our knowledge
viii be scoffed at This is inevitable in the
onward march of progress.
SUMMING UP.
What have tried TO say | may sum up in
few words: There is an ideal manhood to
which in Gods providence our human race
must come. Every step toward this end
which the individual man shall take
is step won for hun anity. The end rests
with us. 1t is our part in life to work, with
all our strength, toward the realization of
ideal humanity. to add one more link to the
chain which joins the man brute Of the past
through the man OF the present 10 the man
of the future, the man who will be like