James H. Tufts

Recent Discussions of Moral Evolution

Ethical writers, like biologists, are no longer concerned with the mere fact of evolution. They are dealing with more specific questions of causes and methods. And, as with biology, two stages in the study may be expected. Biologists were at first interested in the historical question: What was the origin of species? They were temporarily satisfied with the answer: Natural selection, operating in conjunction with heredity and variation. Now, however, a clue to the specific method of heredity has been found in Mendelism, the causes operative in producing variation are being discovered by experimentation, and biology is entering upon a constructive stage which promises great results for agriculture, and perhaps also for human health and well-being. Ethics is as yet almost entirely in the descriptive stage. Perhaps we are staggered at the complexity of present problems, and timidly leave to the practical reformer or politician the responsible task of making positive suggestions. But, when the past evolution has been thoroughly analyzed, it may be hoped that social reform and moral education will be more intelligent. The interest of these problems for the student of religion is also obvious. For, to illustrate by one suggestion out of many, we ask: What causes the difference in the ideals of different ages and races? Is it religion, or philosophy, or economic needs and conditions solely? And shall the religious teacher who would hasten the Kingdom of God appeal to the conscience or to the legislature, or, in the conviction that neither of these avails, shall he stand still and wait for the inventor and the inevitable social revolution? It would be absurd to say that we are yet in a position to answer this old question conclusively, but it is not too much to say that no one can now afford to give dogmatic answers without first considering the complexity of the interaction which is increasingly coming into view between religious, political, economic, aesthetic, and ethical factors.

Ethics and International Relations

S THERE, can there be, any ethics of international relations? Or must we recognize that as regards actual conditions, ethical theories are as hopelessly in conflict as warring nations, and that as regards the future, the best that ethics can offer is a choice between radically different views of human responsibilities, standards, and values? Such conflict seems to deny the basal presuppositions of ethics. If there can be no genuine moral principle that does not hold good for all rational beings, if consequences of happiness or well being for all rational must be reckoned with, if good and bad are properties of things independent of opinion, or if good is the transcendent and eternalon any of these ethical theories right and good should not be determined by national frontiers. Yet apart from recriminations as to specific acts which seem to one antagonist either intrinsically good or else entirely justifiable as means, whereas to the other they appear so utterly abhorrent as to condemn any end which incorporates them, there are no doubt fundamental differences in moral attitude. As in the historic battles between national religions, or as with such issues as split Loyalist and Puritan in England, North

The Ethics of the Family

THE point of view of the student at the present time in approaching such a problem as that of the ethics of the family makes his task less simple than that of old. He cannot depend upon an infallible intuition or an infallible deduction. He must consider consequences, on the one hand, and psychology of men and women, on the other; he must consider social conditions and the evolution of human personality. Doubtless there are seemingly constant factors-the thrill of passion and the necessity of rational control; the love of mother for child and of child for mother; the effects of habit and the power of social convention; the conflict between individual choice and public opinion-all these in a sense reappear in generation after generation. They claim their place in any treatment, but love between the sexes has been made in many respects a different hing because of all that fiction and poetry, as well as church and state, have done to it. Recently the industrial revolution, the conditions of city life, the progress of higher education, the general movement toward emancipation of woman, have combined so to change both the controlling conditions of human life and the mental attitudes and temper of men, women, and children, that the problems long since comfortably and confidently settled clamor for reconsideration. Ethics may or may not reach conclusions as to marriage, divorce, economic dependence of woman, parental responsibility, distinction between legitimate and illegitimate birth, which agree with the judgments of the past, but no ethics can simply reaffirm these past judgments without noting the changed personalities and changed conditions.

In a Seminary ‐‐ Forty Years Ago and Now∗

∗Dr. Tufts has been serving as Acting President of the Chicago Theological Seminary during the interim between the administrations of Dr. Davis and Dr. Palmer. This article was published in the Chicago Theological Seminary Register, January, 1930, and it is reprinted with permission of the editor of that journal.

Religion's Place in Securing a Better World-Order

This article contains the substance of an address given to the students in the University of Chicago. After considering briefly ritual, mysticism, and the individualistic experience of redemption as aspects of religion without large influence on social reconstruction, the writer sets the function of faith as a stirring challenge to easy acquiescence, and indicates the moral power given by a belief that moral effort has a cosmic reinforcement. Such faith is an important factor in heartening men for social and economic reconstruction. Religion is also an expression of the deeper unity and spirit of a community. It seeks a juster society. As the group enlarges, ideals of justice grow broader. In spite of much provincialism there are in modern religion forces making for a more just and harmonious social order.

The Services of Present-Day Philosophy to Theological Reconstruction

The philosophy of our day has as great variety as religion. One difficulty in our modern theological world is that the church has built theological systems of the Greek or Roman worlds into its formulas. As these philosophies are almost nowhere taught except in theological seminaries, it is a little difficult for university-trained men to appreciate the truth which our inherited theology expresses. This is very unfortunate. While religion is for us all, theology must be the peculiar property of men who have been taught to think. Can our modern philosophy do for our day what Aristotle and Plato, the Stoic and the Alexandrine, did for their day?

The Present Task of Ethical Theory

aspect of experience. Now, however, the issue is more frequently presented in the biological and sociological terms. Is one completely determined by heredity and environment?, When the question is so stated, light seems near from the analogy of the sciences which deal with these fields. In so far as science is taking active