Man will value other men, all other men, because he belongs to them, and they to him. He will believe it is right for all men to have a strong sense of personal worth, and he will value all behavior that demonstrates that this sense of personal worth exists. This, you see, is the contribution of the role-playing ethic to man’s ultimate development. Out of the fifth level, the cognitive ethic, man will come to value knowledge, all knowledge, no matter how foreign to his previous beliefs the knowledge be. The sixth ethic, the ethic of compassion will contribute valuing all things human as a revelation of the power of the person to cope with life. He will value empathy and sympathy, fear and anger, loving and hating, comprehension and understanding. He will value compassion. From the seventh level will come valuing of the cosmos as a while and all things animate and inanimate. Above all, man will value the conservation of life and of things contributing to life. He will value his own life, only as means to the end that life shall be everlasting. Not his life, but the life that comes after him. And, man will value those things that genuinely assure that all men yet to come shall have their chance to self-actualize, their chances to be human. Thus, we come to the end of the evolutionary trail of man’s ethical development, but the thesis of this work is not yet completed. Having theorized that ethical development follows a natural evolutionary path, inherent in the emergent growth trends of the human organism, can one see within this design what is moral and immoral behavior? And can one show that morality in our times is not necessarily collapsing?

The theory states that a sound system of ethics must be based on the character of the human organism, must assure that human life will continue to exist, must not require man to behave in a manner contrary to his nature, and must allow one, without equivocation or exception, to denote what is ethical or unethical, moral or immoral.

It is because of these criteria that one suggests a sound system of ethics has not existed. The primary criterion by which to judge an ethical system is: Does it provide that human life shall continue to exist. Judgment depends, secondarily, upon using the concept of evolutionary stages of ethical development. Application of these criteria suggests that systems of ethics associated with lower levels are not sound systems of ethics. Taking human life is a form of behavior, according to this theory, associated with four levels of behavior and at least three ethical systems, the famine, survival, safety and conformity levels of behavior, the sacrificial, Machiavellian and conformistic ethical levels.²

The sacrificial, Machiavellian and conformistic ethics do condone, at times, the taking of life. Salem witchcraft, death for treason and death for resisting the regime are bits of evidence. These ethics, therefore, are imperfect ethical systems, and thus, theoretically, will not endure. Yet is these very actions, within the systems mentioned, which present the problem most difficult to comprehend within this theory. Those who live by the values of one of the lower level ethical systems will believe that the violation of certain values of that ethic shall be punished by death. They will take life, and will feel justified because they will believe they are behaving in a moral way. Those of the Inquisition, those who murdered Hungarians in 1956, the Castroites today, will perceive their behavior as moral because they are bound, perceptually, within the imperfection of a lower level system. The fortunate, and we can be thankful that there are today many such fortunate ones who are operating at higher levels, will see the behavior as ultimately to be judged immoral. But let me, at this point, enter a note of caution which stems from the theory.

He, at a higher level of ethical behavior, needs to recognize that we must evolve, not skip to the higher level. One stops Machiavellian homicide by providing security and safety; one stops conformistic killing by providing satisfaction of belonging needs. Behavior typical to lower level ethics is not given up because of reproach, remonstration, punishment or education. Such treatment contains the behavior, but it does not change it. To change lower level ethical behavior, one must provide the satisfaction necessary for the person, or the society, to evolve upward.
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²   There are two aspects to the taking of human life which need further thought. The question of euthanasia is one, and the other is the homicide which seems to have been committed to gain status or esteem, for example, killings by juvenile gang members. The question of euthanasia involves the problem of what is a human, on the one hand, (the born to human-monstrous creature is a point in question), on the other hand, the loss of self through disease. Some would say, taking life in such circumstances is evidence of humanly social behavior. The position hypothesized states that one must not equivocate when judging moral and immoral, but since the writer is just a human being, at this point he stands accused. He does not know the answer to his dilemma. Killing for status requires more thought, more investigation.