THE NEW ETHICS. By J. Howard Moore. Ernest Bell, Portugal Street. Price 35. net.
Those who have read Mr. Howard Moore‘s previous book, The Universal Kinship, will remember that he therein demonstrated very conclusively how the difference between man and the lower animals, whether considered physically, psychically or ethically, is one of degree only and not of kind, and they will have a fuller appreciation of his later volume, which is in reality a plea for the practical application of The Great Law—act towards others as you would act towards a part of your own self. There is in it no attempt to formulate any new code of ethics, but rather to show in plain-spoken words how far mankind at its present stage of evolution falls short of any adequate power to see and feel the meaning of universal solidarity.
A great part of the book is devoted to the wrongs inflicted on the sub-human species, and who shall say that these wrongs are exaggerated or, in the face of them, feel vainglorious of man’s dominion. The reading of such indictments would tend towards a despairing attitude were it not for the golden thread of the author’s faith in future progress and his belief that the earth is not old but only in its infancy and that the grandest times are all before us, for “it is inconceivable,” he says, “ that the tendencies of altruistic evolution, which have already acquired such momentum and achieved so much, will atrophy, or that that Saviour-like something within us, which shapes our ideals and redeems us, will endure everlastingly a planet of fratricides.”
His criticisms of our mode of treating those below us are scathing indeed, where we are concerned in using them for work, sport, science, dress ог food. It is all selfishness and exploitation, whereas the relationship between man and animal should be profitable to each, a two-sided instead of a one-sided condition, and he paints an attractive sketch of the Ideal, which is Reciprocity and simple Justice.
The book deserves attention if only for the masterly way in which the subject of human diet—the question of What shall we eat ?—is dealt with. Three chapters are devoted to it, and the present day carnivorous diet is unconditionally condemned, whether from the point of view of the evolutionist, the anatomist or the athlete. The three chapters together give one of the best expositions we have yet seen of the position of the advocates of a bloodless diet.
When at times we find Mr. Moore chiding the world impatiently we may be tempted to accuse him of pessimism, but we think the truer and deeper feeling of the man which foresees the ultimate triumph of good is shown in the following passage : “It seems sometimes that I can almost see the shining spires of that Celestial Civilization that man is to build in the ages to come on this earth—that Civilization that will jewel the land masses of this planet in that sublime time when Science has wrought the miracles of a million years, and Man, no longer the savage he now is, breathes Justice and Brotherhood to every being that feels.” With this vision concludes a vigorous, trenchant and original treatise on a subject which certainly deserves much more attention than it has hitherto attracted.