The best that is in man is generated in the experiences of his daily
life. The attributing of moral qualities to the gods was a much later
development in the evolution of the moral ideas. At this stage of our
development man is fortified by a sense of human fellowship, and in
practice, as well as in theory, has long since given up the assumption
that he needed superhuman beliefs. He has fully recognized the
independence of morality from superhuman beliefs.
James Mill and J. S. Mill taught the greatest happiness of the greatest
number as the supreme object of action and the basis of morality. And it
was this conception that introduced the new ethical principles of duty
to posterity. This conception is a much nobler one than the religious
interpretation of morality to consist in mainly defining what man's duty
to God is; a morality whose chief selfish inspiration is not the helping
of one's fellowmen but the saving of one's own soul. A secular morality
teaches that what man thinks, says, and does lives after him and
influences for good or ill future generations. This is a higher, nobler,
and greater incentive to righteousness than any life of personal reward
or fear of punishment in a future life. There are today a rapidly
growing number of eminent moral teachers who condemn the clinging to the
belief of personal existence after death as a hindrance to the best life
on earth. Professor J. H. Leuba, in his work, "The Belief in God and
Immortality," concludes that, "These facts and considerations indicate
that the reality of the belief in immortality to civilized nations is
much more limited than is commonly supposed; and that, if we bring into
calculation all the consequences of the belief, and not merely its
gratifying effects, we may even be brought to conclude that its
disappearance from among the most civilized nations would be, on the
whole, a gain."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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