IV

MORAL STANDARDS AND THE MORAL ORDER

There is only one moral order of the universe—­one range of moral as of physical law.  For instance, the law of gravitation—­simplest of physical principles—­holds the last star in the abyss of space, rounds the dew-drop on the petal of a spring violet and determines the symmetry of living organisms; but it is one and unchanging, a fundamental pull in the nature of matter itself.  So with moral laws:  they are not superadded to life by some divine or other authority.  They are simply the fundamental principles in the nature of life itself, which we must obey to grow and be happy.

If the moral order is one and unchanging, man does change in relation to it, and moral standards are relative to the stage of his growth.  History is filled with illustrations of this relativity of ethical standards.

For instance:  human slavery doubtless began as an act of beneficence on the part of some philanthropist well in advance of his age.  The first man who, in the dim dawn of history, said to the captive he had made in war, “I will not kill you and eat you; I will let you live and work for me the rest of your life”:  that man instituted human slavery; but it was distinctly a step upward, from something that had been far worse.

Homer represents Ulysses as the favorite pupil of Pallas Athena, goddess of wisdom:  why?  Baldly stated, because Ulysses was the shrewdest and most successful liar in classic antiquity.  If Ulysses were to appear in a society of decent men to-day, he would be excluded from their companionship, and for the same reason that led Homer to glorify him as the favorite pupil of the goddess of wisdom.  Thus what is a virtue at one stage of development becomes a vice as man climbs to higher recognition of the moral order.

Just because the moral standard is relative, it is absolutely binding where it applies.  In other words, if you see the light shining on your path, you owe obedience to the light; one who does not see it, does not owe obedience in the same way.  If you do not obey your light, your punishment is that you lose the light—­degenerate to a lower plane, and it is the worst punishment imaginable.

Thus the same act may be for the undeveloped life, non-moral, for the developed, distinctly immoral.  Before the instincts of personal modesty and purity were developed, careless sex-promiscuity meant something entirely different from what a descent to it means in our society.  When a man of some primitive tribe went out and killed a man of another tribe, the action was totally different morally from .the murder by a man of one community of a citizen of a neighboring town to-day.