Science is unflinchingly deterministic, and it has begun to force its determinism into morals. On some shining tomorrow a psychoanalyst may be put into the box to prove that perjury is simply a compulsion neurosis, like beating time with the foot at a concert or counting the lampposts along the highway.
Interpretation
The quote discusses the deterministic nature of science and its implications for moral behavior.
H. L. Mencken highlights the idea that scientific determinism, which frames human actions as predetermined by psychological conditions, may extend into the realm of morality. He suggests that future advancements could reduce moral transgressions, such as perjury, to mere psychological compulsions, much like involuntary physical habits, thereby challenging the notion of free will in ethical decision-making.
In practice
In a debate about the influence of science on moral decisions, one could reference this quote.
I know a good many men of great learning-that is, men born with an extraordinary eagerness and capacity to acquire knowledge. One and all, they tell me that they can't recall learning anything of any value in school. All that schoolmasters managed to accomplish with them was to test and determine the amount of knowledge that they had already acquired independently-and not infrequently the determination was made clumsily and inaccurately.
It takes a long while for a naturally trustful person to reconcile himself to the idea that after all God will not help him
It is the theory of all modern civilized governments that they protect and foster the liberty of the citizen; it is the practice of all of them to limit its exercise, and sometimes very narrowly.
The central belief of every moron is that he is the victim of a mysterious conspiracy against his common rights and true deserts.
The cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy.
It is my conviction that no normal man ever fell in love, within the ordinary meaning of the term, after the age of thirty.
If desire did not dim the brain, nobody would ever get married, drunk, or fat. ~Val
It would be so much better if we could share our insecurity, if we could all venture inside ourselves and realize that green beans and vitamin C, however much they nurture us, cannot save lives, or sustain our souls.
Birth and death are not two different states, but they are different aspects of the same state.
Thought can be so seductive and hypnotic that it absorbs your attention totally, so you become your thoughts.
While society cannot provide employment for its members, the production/work/income nexus has to be abandoned as a justification for our present parsimony to the unemployed. An assumption cannot be used to justify making second-class citizens of those who are unfortunate enough to constitute living proof of the inaccuracy of that assumption.
Death is the destination we all share, no one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be because death is very likely the single best invention of life.
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