Social idealism / by R. Dimsdale Stocker.

  • Richard Dimsdale Stocker
Date:
1910
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: Social idealism / by R. Dimsdale Stocker. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    51/262 page 39
    Surprise has frequently been experienced at the lofty moral tone of some of the so-called “heathen” moralists, who (in spite of their indifference to the popular religions) have praised and practised virtue. But when we remember Professor HofFding’s words, and that the ethical life of men took its rise, not in revelation, but in experience, the explanation is perfectly simple and intelligible. Morals are not necessarily, and certainly not essentially, religious. But, true as this is, we must still admit that, at all stages of religious and moral development, a certain connection, and sometimes an intimate one, is found to exist- between religion and ethical beliefs and theories. Thus, on the one hand, nothing can be clearer than that an en- lightened moral conception has been the means of transforming countless religious opinions. We see this going on to-day, in the movements which are styled as “ Modernism ” and the “ New Theology.” And similar attempts at religious reconstruction, which were inspired by more exalted ethical conceptions, were in- troduced in his day by Plato. While, on the
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