Page:Karl Kautsky - Ethics and The Materialist Conception of History - tr. J. B. Askew (1906).pdf/126

 signs fail, for which also a need first arises with the common work. Then is it possible to address distinct demands to the individual. If these demands arise from individual and exceptional needs, then they will again disappear with the individual exceptional case. If on the other hand they have their origin in the social relations, they will recur again and again, so long as these relations last; and in the beginnings of society, where the development is very slow, one can allow hundreds of thousands of years for the endurance of particular social conditions. The social demands on the individual repeat themselves so often and so regularly, that they become a habit, to which the tendency is finally inherited, as the tendency to peculiar kinds of hunting by the sporting dogs, so that certain suggestions suffice to arouse the habit in the descendants as well; also, for instance, the feeling of shame, the habit of covering certain portions of the body whose nude state appears immoral.

Thus arise demands on the individual from society which are more numerous the more complicated is society, and these demands, finally by force of habit, become, without any further ado, recognised as moral commands.

From this customary character many materialist ethical writers have concluded that the entire being of morals rests alone on custom. With that it is, nevertheless, by no means exhausted. In the first place only such views become, through habit, moral commands, which favour the consideration of the individual for the society, and regulate his conduct to other men. It may be brought against this, that there are individual vices which count as immoral, yet their original condemnation was certainly also in the interest of society. Thus, for example, masturbation, if general, must prejudice the chance of securing a numerous progeny—and such a progeny appeared then, when Malthus had not yet spoken, as one of the weightiest foundations of the well-being and progress of society.

In the Bible (Genesis XXXVIII.) Onan was killed by Jehovah because he allowed his spermatozoa to fall to