Page:Karl Kautsky - Ethics and The Materialist Conception of History - tr. J. B. Askew (1906).pdf/100



Human society, in contrast to those of animals, is continually changing, and for that very reason the people in it must continually be doing the same. The alteration in the conditions of life must react on the nature of man; the division of labour necessarily develops some of his natural organs in a greater degree, and transforms many. Thus, for instance, the development of the human ape from a fruit tree eater into a devourer of animals and plants which are to be found on the ground, was bound to be connected with a transformation of the hind pair of hands into feet. On the other hand, since the discovery of the tool, no animal has been subjected to such manifold and rapid changes in his surroundings as man, and no animal confronted with such tremendous and increasing problems of adaptation to his environment as he, and hence none had to use its intellect to the same degree as he. Already at the beginning of that career, which was opened up by the discovery of the first tool, superior to the rest of the animals by reason of his adaptability and his intellectual powers, he was forced in the course of his history to develop both qualities in the highest degree.

If the changes in society are able to transform the organism of man, his hands, his feet, his brain, how much the more, and how much greater, to change his consciousness, his views of that which was useful and harmful, good and bad, possible and impossible.

If man begins his rise above the animals with the discovery of the tool, he has no need to first create a social compact as was believed in the eighteenth century, and, as many theoretical jurists still believe, in the twentieth. He enters on his human development as a social animal with strong social impulses. The first ethical result of them on society could only be to influence the force of these impulses. According to the character of society these impulses will be either strengthened or weakened. There is nothing more