THE STANDARD PUBLISHED TO PROMOTE ETHICAL THINKING FORTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF THE FOUNDING OF THE ETHICAL CULTURE MOVEMENT IN AMERICA SPECIAL REPORT OF THE PROCEEDINGS THE PRIMACY OF ETHICS By DAVID SAVILLE MUZZEY FIFTEEN CENTS ISSUED BY THE AMERICAN ETHICAL UNION Published monthly from October to May by the American Ethical Union, 2 West Sixty-fourth Street, New York City. Yearly subscription-eight issues-One dollar in advance. Entered as second-class matter at the New York Post Office. The Editors of THE STANDARD beg to advise its readers that while they intend to maintain a distinctive attitude and policy with regard to the main ethical problems discussed in its columns, they cannot and do not accept responsibility for the particular opinions expressed by the writers THE STANDARD greets its readers at the opening of its third year with a number specially devoted to a report of the Fortieth Anniversary of the founding of the Ethical Culture Movement. These notes are published partly as a record of a modest achievement, partly as a call to the courageous continuance of our work, and partly as a challenge, in the name of a rational and humanistic ethics, to the official creeds and systems of dogma which still remain potent in the full twentieth century to confuse the simple issue of moral integrity. We believe that there is not merely an honorable place but a crying need for an organization pledged to the cultivation of an ethical philosophy of life, independent of supernatural motives and sanctions. The best and noblest men have always differed radically in their political views, their religious faith, and their philosophical systems; but they have tended, in just so far as they have been the best and noblest, to agreement in their moral codes. It is possible for a man to be a Presbyterian and a defaulter at the same time, but it is not possible for a man to be an ethical person and a defaulter at the same time. These latter terms are mutually contradictory. If the Church replies that a man cannot be a good Presbyterian and a defaulter, it simply introduces the ethical criterion to control the religious profession, and so acknowledges in fact the primacy of ethics. The teachings of history and experience show too many instances both of sterling moral integrity without supernatural belief and of deplorable moral obliquity joined to supernatural belief, to allow the slightest validity to the claim that the proper profession of faith is the guarantee of righteous behaviour. And we contend that righteous behaviour is the chief end of life. We are under no illusions as to the rapid spread or proximate prevalence of the simple ethical religion of common sense. Human kind has been nourished for so many centuries on the dogmas of supernaturalism, and its thinking has been so greatly determined by the speculative Platonic unrealities called "higher" or "divine" truth, that simple empiric human truth seems unworthy and common |