ETHICAL TENDENCIES OF THE EASTERN AND THE WESTERN
PHILOSOPHIES 294
The Prevalence of Speculation in all Ages in Regard to the Great
Questions of Man's Origin and Destiny, and His Relations to
God--The Various Schemes which have Seemingly Dispensed with the
Necessity for a Creator in Accounting for the Existence of the
Visible World--The Ancient Atomic Theories and Modern
Evolution--Kanada, Lucretius, Herbert Spencer--Darwin's Theory of
the Development of Species--Similar Theories Ascribed to the
Chinese--The Ethical Difficulties Attending Many Philosophic
Speculations, Ancient and Modern--Hindu Pantheism and Moral
Responsibility--In the Advance from Instinct to Conscience and
Religion, where does Moral Sentiment Begin?--If It was Right for
Primeval Man to Maraud, why Might not Robbery again Become His Duty
in Case of Extreme Deterioration?--Mr. Spencer's Theory of the
Origin of Moral Intuition--The Nobler Origin which the Scriptures
Assign to Man's Moral Nature--The Demonstrated Possibility of the
Most Radical and Sudden Moral Changes Produced by the Christian
Faith--Tendency of Ancient and Modern Theories to Lower the General
Estimate of Man--The Dignity with which the New Testament Invests
Him--The Ethical Tendency of the Doctrine of Evolution--The Opinion
Expressed on the Subject by Goldwin Smith--Peschel's Frank
Admission--The Pessimistic Tendency of all Anti-Biblical Theories
of Man's Origin, Life, and Destiny--Buddha, Schopenhauer, and the
Agnostics--The more Hopeful Influence of the Bible--The Tendency of
all Heathen Religions and all Anti-Christian Philosophies toward
Fatalism--Pantheism and the Philosophy of Spinoza Agreeing in this
Respect with the Hindu Vedantism--The Late Samuel Johnson's "Piety
of Pantheism," and His Definition of Fatalism--What Saves the
Scriptural Doctrine of Fore-ordination from Fatalism--The Province
of Faith and of Trust.