It is with great interest that I have observed the widespread literary hostilities engendered by the publication of Miss Elsie A. Gidlow’s article on “Life for Life’s Sake” in the October, 1919, Wolverine. Its subject is one which has attracted my speculative attention since earliest youth; and which has, on account of my decided opinions, frequently drawn me into controversy. In offering additional comment my object is to touch upon the philosophical phase so promptly combated by Mr. Maurice Winter Moe, yet so oddly neglected by those who have held dispute on the artistic phase. Possibly my remarks will develop into a collective reply to Miss Gidlow and Mr. Moe, rather than a reply to the former alone; since despite their opposite views on theism, both seem curiously alike in their narrowly doctrinal as distinguished from generally philosophical attitude.

Miss Gidlow has discovered the fact that there is no vast supernatural intelligence governing the cosmos—a thing Democritus could have told her several centuries B.C.—and is amazingly disturbed thereat. Without stopping to consider the possibility of acquiescence in a purposeless, mechanical universe, she at once strives to invent a substitute for the mythology she has cast aside; and preaches as a new and surprising discovery the ancient selfish hedonism whose folly was manifest before the death of its founder Aristippus.’ There is something both amusing and pathetic about the promulgation of hedonism in this complex age of human interdependence. While of course the ultimate basis of every human act is selfishness, manifested as a craving for self-approval, it is easy to perceive the utter and destructive impracticability of any system exalting that crude and unmoral selfishness which has not been refined into a delicate altruism. Such a bestial relapse means the end of human harmony and cooperation, and therefore of civilisation.

Mr. Moe, fully alive to the absurdity of the Gidlovian philosophy, unfortunately chooses the most primitive, antiquated, and fallacious of methods to refute it. Rejecting the ready weapons supplied by sociology and common sense, he falls back upon the archaic notion that brutal selfishness can be fought only by belief in the supernatural; thus attacking hedonism purely as a theist, and actually strengthening Miss Gidlow’s position by assuming that it is the one logical position of the rationalist. Mr. Moe, in his zeal for an outgrown faith, damages the cause of practical virtue by binding religion and morality so closely together that the precious verities of the latter must needs sink with the obsolete dogmata of the former.

How sickening is the eternal quest for “creeds” and “ideals” in which theists and atheists are alike engrossed! Why will not Miss Gidlow and Mr. Moe step down to earth for a while and face the problems of life as they are? We are all negligible, microscopic insects of a moment; waifs astray in infinity, born yesterday and doomed to perish tomorrow for all time. We have no reason to ask the trite questions of “whence, whither, and why”, for it is only our finite, subjective, rudimentary intellects which conjure up the notion of cosmic purpose. According to all the evidence we can command, we came from chaos and will return to chaos; drifting in a blind mechanical cycle devoid of anything like a goal or object. So much Miss Gidlow will perhaps concede, yet her rationalism seems to end at this point. Its futility having been demonstrated, mankind as a whole interests her no longer. She is joyously ‘disburdened’, and flies to individualistic gratifications.

A real ethical philosophy can be founded only on practicalities. We do not need to seek for a goal, since the goal of mental evolution and the subordination of pain stands so conspicuously before us. We can do nothing save try to make life tolerable for the greatest number of persons, and to do this we must supplant crude selfishness by that subtilised selfishness which is expressed in moral sacrifices of immediate pleasure for the common good and tranquillity. We need not look up to imaginary idols in the empty sky, but we must not relapse into the primitive selfish savagery from which we have evolved. Let us adopt the soundest motto of all—Life for Humanity’s Sake!