Page:Philosophical Review Volume 5.djvu/531

515 No. 5.] CAUSE AND FUNCTION OF CONSCIENCE. 515 progressively adapt itself to conditions in general, but especially it must determine its own range, and assess nicely actions that improve its species as well as those that directly insure the lat- ter' s survival. That not all actions in self or others are best when apprehended as actions, and accordingly judged, is plain. Which need be and which should not be morally appraised, is not an easy question in detail, nor yet an unimportant one. A too broad conscience is more rare than a too narrow one, though both are to be found. It is of course only gradually, and in the main unreflectively, that conscience has found and kept a useful range, divergences therefrom, when too great, leading to adverse selection.1 Quite analogously, actions in the departments of art, science, religion, as well as of morality itself, do and must appropriately awaken conscience. If these do not directly make for survival, they achieve something more important : they accumulate a capital of resources and capacities potent above all else in fur- thering race-preservation. At least they can do so, and the conscience that survives tends to assist them to accomplish this. In many other ways besides those indicated, conscience has been gradually moulded out of less into more useful shape. In several respects, on the other hand, conscience is well fitted for its role. For conscience as active and emotional is conserva- tive ; as rational it is progressive. Plainly the characteristics indicated are in general those indispensable to a counter-check on voluntary action. Some of the conditions in which races find themselves are practically permanent, and the abstinences and actions best adjusted to these, once acquired, must be firmly maintained. The corresponding prohibitive and enjoining elements of conscience must in the majority at least be put out of the way of harm in the form of inherited instincts, and races that have survived, for that very reason, display such under investigation. Other conditions, while not permanent, have existed for many generations, and successful races owe their 1 This fact, that the range of conscience is itself a phenomenon on which nat- ural selection (as well as other forces mentioned under IV) acts, renders relatively unimportant the question as to whether all apprehended actions arouse conscience.