American Imago

Leites, Nathan. Trends in Moral Temper.

Wells, F. L. The Beans of St. Botolph's; and Other Letters to Screw-tape.

Tarachow, Sidney. Totem Feast in Modern Dress.

Roheim, Geza. The Bear in the Haunted Mill.

Leites, Nathan. Trends in Moral Temper. A paper referring largely to the writings of Camus and Sartre. The material refers only to the non-totalitarian part of western culture, and more specifically to the metropolitan areas of North America and Western Europe. The material is illustrative and not designed to prove general statements. In the last quarter century two long prepared events emerged on a large scale, one by now commonplace, the other less so. First, the core of moral agreement tended to vanish as western culture split into a totalitarian and a non-totalitarian part. Second, the degree of felt certainty in moral reactions, of whatever content, tended to decline in the non-totalitarian part. A Moral statement began to seem by its very nature incapable of the massive certainty of statements about facts. With this, there was a decline in the feeling that ethical statements could be as conclusively proved as statements about facts. Rational persuasion in moral matters has become less conceivable. The newer attitude tends to look for extra-verbal means of resolving a verbal deadlock. The philosophic counterparts of these feeling trends can be found in logical empiricism and existentialism. The disappearance of ethical certainty may be followed by a fading out of the ethical dimension of feeling. There is probably a direct relationship between the weakening of religious and metaphysical beliefs and the decline of ethics. The elimination of God affects ethical attitudes in at least three ways: as the elimination of the creator of ethical norms; as the elimination of the being who punishes their violation and rewards conformity; and as the elimination of after-life. Beliefs in the second function of God had probably decreased earlier and more rapidly