Page:Divine Selection or The Survival of the Useful.djvu/106

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are due to "the coercive social structure which chronic external enmity develops, and to the non-coercive social structure developed by a life of internal amity."[1]

Even chastity has no intrinsic virtue, is given a materialistic origin, and shares the same fate as other virtues. "Among men as among inferior creatures the needs of the species determine the rightness or wrongness of those or these sexual relations."[2]

If virtues have their origin in conditions of society, and are primarily based upon the customs of social compacts, it is true that adultery, polygamy, polyandry, and all forms of lasciviousness can be ethically supported equally with the virtues, as Mr. Spencer claims. These lamentable conclusions of materialistic reasonings are the inevitable results of the non-acknowledgment of God, in whom truth and good

  1. ibid, vol. i., page 409.
  2. ibid, vol. ii., page 448.