Prof. Peabody's Lecture.

Last night Prof. Peabody gave an exceedingly interesting lecture in Sever II. on the Ethics of the Social Questions.

Social questions are in reality, moral ones. Even behind all economic and political questions, lies the fact that the conscience of the country is pricked with shame. All these things find a partial solution in an attempt to form an ethical theory.

The modern theory of evolution has transformed the theory of ethics, and put a certain degree of vitality into it. Formerly the individual was studied as an isolated being, independent of every thing; now he is looked upon as an essential part of a great common life.

Man is never alone. Human life is begun in society, in a social group, of at least three, the father, mother, and the child itself, and as it grows, its group broadens, and its absorption of outside influences increases, till isolation is absolutely impossible.

The phrase, social organism, is the key to the new ethics. Although the individual is to be studied in relation to the organism in which he is found, as he bears his share of its trials and its fortunes, the analogy between him and the social body must be limited. Hobbs, however, states the very opposite. He declares that the social life is entirely artificial, that the natural state is one of isolation; a commonwealth makes an artificial man. But this commonwealth must surely be the inevitable condition of human life; the natural man of Hobbs would only have the desolate freedom of a wild ass. So man stands by his very nature in the midst of a social condition, and it is his best course to adjust himself to it, not to try to escape it. His right conduct is the adjustment of his social life to the public order, it is simply the stable adjustment between the part and its whole. This is the question of modern ethics.

This adjustment may come about in one of four ways, by defying the organism, by appealing to it, by temporizing with it, or by finding a life of servitude in it. Any single man, in his growth can be said to pass through these states in order, until at last he may reach the truly moral life.

"What is my duty," is the great question. The unwavering egoist answers, that you have none but your own pleasure. The fatalist answers, that since you are the product of your environments, you must yield to them. No one can decide whether a man shall follow the course of expediency or of simple duty, each must weigh that question for himself.

Then there are the ethics of the family. Here comes the divorce problem, the disruption of social groups. How shall man and woman stand in this organism? Lastly, charity, is the problem of the duty of rich to poor. From self-indulgence on the one hand to social resolution on the other is but a single logical step. Ethics says that stability and prosperity are only to be reach by establishing a relation of peaceful alliance.