Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 8.djvu/380

 364 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

We used to be told that every human creature had a moral sense by which he could distinguish right from wrong, just about as he has an eye enabling him to distinguish between colors, or between black and white ; but if we were forced today to accept this standpoint, we should find ourselves in a very muddled state of mind. It would have gone on all right, perhaps, until the science of anthropology arose, up to the time when the investi- gations were undertaken into the conditions of undeveloped or savage races ; although, as a matter of fact, the theory had given trouble enough even among developed minds, owing to what seemed to be a conflict of duties arising every now and then.

The rise of conscience in primitive times may have been something like the first appearance of an eye-organ in low types, where we observe a few pigment cells by which the creature may distinguish feebly between light and no light, between utter darkness and glaring sunshine. That is about all the moral sense we can discern in many savage races. The conscience we discern there would seem to be very closely identified with the rise of the first elements of fellow-feeling between members of the same tribe, restraining individuals in that tribe from killing each other or stealing from each other. Even on that score, it does not show itself there above the very lowest stage. It is customary, as we all know now, among certain races to kill off the old people. Children bury their aged fathers or mothers alive. I doubt whether in the strict sense of the term we can say that conscience appears there, any more than we can say that the pigment cells in a low organism are the same thing as an eye. We could not expect a full-fledged conscience in a half-fledged soul, any more than we could expect a complex eye in a simple, one-celled organism.

What evolution as a theory has done for ethical philosophy has been, therefore, to show us that the moral sense has come by a process of growth, like all other features or phases of men- tal or spiritual experience. It appears gradually. There has been, as we now realize, no fully equipped organ of moral sense such as the primitive human creature was supposed to be endowed with. In * word, conscience is coming, rather than