Page:Karl Kautsky - Ethics and The Materialist Conception of History - tr. J. B. Askew (1906).pdf/128

 in human nature—the nature of man as a social animal; even the moral tenets are nothing arbitrary, but arise from social needs.

It is certainly not possible in every case to fix the condition between certain moral conceptions and the social relations from which they arose. The individual takes moral precepts from his social surroundings without being aware of their social causes. The moral law becomes, then, habit to him, and appears to him as an emanation of his own spiritual being, a priori given to him, without any practical root. Only scientific investigation can gradually show up in a series of laws the relations between particular forms of society and particular moral precepts, and then much remains dark. The social forms from which moral principles arose, and which still hold good at a later period, often lie far back, in very primitive times. Besides that, to understand a moral law, not only the social need must be understood which called it forth, but also the peculiar thought of the society which created it. Every method of production is connected not only with particular tools and particular social relations, but also with the particular content of knowledge, with particular powers of intelligence, a particular view of cause and effect, a particular logic—in short, a particular form of thought. To understand earlier modes of thought is, however, uncommonly difficult, much more difficult than to understand the needs of another or his own society.

All the same, however, the connection between the tenets of morals and the social needs has been already proved by so many practical examples that we can accept it as a general rule. If, however, this connection exists, then, an alteration of society must necessitate an alteration in many moral precepts. Their change is thus not only nothing strange, it would be much more strange if with the change of the cause the effect did not also change. These changes are necessary for that very reason, because every form of society requires certain moral precepts suited for its condition.