Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 15.djvu/725

 which ethics deals with, we must study human conduct as a whole, so, fully to understand human conduct as a whole, we must study it as a part of that larger whole constituted by the conduct of animate beings in general. Nor is even this whole conceived with the needful fullness so long as we think only of the conduct at present displayed around us. We have to regard the conduct now shown us by creatures of all orders as an outcome of the conduct which has brought life of every kind to its present height, and this is tantamount to saying that our preparatory step must be to study the evolution of conduct."

The second chapter is devoted to "The Evolution of Conduct," and its import may be gathered from the concluding passage: "Guided by the truth that as the conduct with which ethics deals is part of conduct at large, conduct at large must be generally understood before this part can be specially understood; and guided by the further truth that to understand conduct at large we must understand the evolution of conduct, we have been led to see that ethics has for its subject-matter that form which universal conduct assumes during the last stages of its evolution. We have also concluded that these last stages in the evolution of conduct are those displayed by the highest type of being, when he is forced by increase of numbers to live more and more in presence of his fellows. And there has followed the corollary that conduct gains ethical sanction in proportion as the activities becoming less and less militant and more and more industrial are such as do not necessitate mutual injury or hindrance, but consist with and are furthered by coöperation and mutual aid."

The position here assumed at the outset that morality is a product of evolution is illustrated and confirmed with convincing force throughout the work. Why the moral restraints of conduct are the latest evolved appears by considering the nature of the different kinds of control to which men have been subjected during the unfolding of society. As fully explained in the "Sociology," society begins only in subordination to violent external restraints. The rule of the despotic chief is the germ which develops into the political control of human conduct. The primitive fear of the ghost of the dead chief develops into the superstitious dread of unseen forms, and ultimately becomes that powerful religious control which is so potent in influencing the actions of men. A later developed but definite and powerful form of restraint upon conduct is the influence of public opinion, or the force of social reprobation. The results of these forms of external coercion are so simple, direct, and easily conceived that they are well fitted to act upon undeveloped natures, and they come into play first in the order of social progress.

The moral motive to conduct differs from the preceding by recognizing the results that actions naturally produce. As Mr. Spencer remarks: "We are now prepared to see that the restraints properly distinguished as moral are unlike these restraints out of which they evolve, and with which they are long confounded, in this—they refer not to the extrinsic effects of actions but to their intrinsic effects. The truly moral deterrent from murder is not constituted by a representation of hanging as a consequence, or by a representation of tortures in hell as a consequence, or by a representation of the horror and hatred excited in fellow men; but by a representation of the necessary natural results—the infliction of death-agony on the victim, the destruction of all his possibilities of happiness, the entailed sufferings to his belongings. Neither the thought of imprisonment, nor of divine anger, nor of social disgrace, is that which constitutes the moral check on theft; but the thought of injury to the person robbed, joined with a vague consciousness of the general evils caused by disregard of proprietary rights.

"And now we see why the moral feelings and correlative restraints have arisen later than the feelings and restraints that originate from political, religious, and social authorities; and have so slowly, and even yet so incompletely, disentangled themselves. For only by these lower feelings and restraints could be maintained the conditions under which the higher feelings and restraints evolve. It is thus alike with the self-regarding feelings and with the other regarding feelings. The pains which improvidence will bring, and the pleasures to be gained by storing up things for future use and by laboring to get such things, can be habitually contrasted in thought, only