Science and Morals and Other EssaysWindle, Bertram Coghill Alan, Sir
Religion
Science and Morals and Other Essays
Windle, Bertram Coghill Alan, Sir
Essays; Religion and science; Science
By another Eugenist we are told that willy-nilly every sound, healthy
person of either sex must get married or at least betake him or herself
to the business of propagating the race. That at least is the essence of
his singularly offensive dictum that since the celibacy of the Catholic
clergy and of members of Religious Orders deprives the State of a
number of presumably excellent parents, "if monastic orders and
institutions are to continue, they should be open only to the
eugenically unfit."[32] If the religious call is not to be permitted to
dispense a man or woman from entering the estate of matrimony, it may be
assumed that nothing else, except an unfavourable report from the
committee of selection, will do so. And, further, as the one object of
all this is to bring super-children into the world, we must also assume
that those who fail in this duty will find themselves in peril of the
law.
Surely what has been set down shows that whatever scientific reputation
the writers in question possess, and it is undeniably great, it has not
equipped them, one will not merely say with moral or religious ideas,
but with an ordinary knowledge of human nature. It has not equipped them
with any conception apparently of political possibilities; and it has
left them without any of that saving salt, a sense of humour. Like
Huxley, they have started out to give opinions without first having made
themselves familiar with the subject on which they were to deliver
judgment.
It is perhaps little to be wondered at that the intense preoccupation
which the study of science entails should tend to induce those whose
attention is constantly fixed on Nature to imagine that from Nature can
be drawn not only lessons of physical life but lessons also of conduct.
Of course this is quite wrong; for Nature has no moral lesson to teach
us. We are told to go to the ant--at least the sluggard is--but for
what? To amend his sluggardliness. No one has ever suggested that we
should go to Nature to learn to be humble, kindly, unselfish, tolerant,
and Christian, in our dealings with others; and for this excellent
reason, that none of these things can be learnt from Nature. Science is
neither moral nor immoral, but non-moral; and, as we have seen a
thousand times in this present war, its kindest gifts to man can be
used, and are used, for his cruel destruction. In this war,
pre-eminently amongst all wars, we have the application of pure natural
principles unameliorated by the influences of Christianity, or of
chivalry, Christianity's offspring. As Sir Robert Borden has summed it
up, German kultur is an attempt "to impose upon us the law of the
jungle."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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