Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 86.djvu/473

Rh closest adaptation of conduct as a means to the end of securing the greatest amount of enduring human happiness, is the goal. To this end we must steer between lax standards which allow license, and rigid standards which produce hypocrisy. We must avoid, on the one hand, that extreme of rigid regulation which unintelligently crushes out all variation and preserves only the spiritless, and, on the other hand, avoid that total absence of social conduct which is anarchy. Now this middle course is possible only when a majority of the people are moral by nature. The reason for this is the fact that most people need the constant pressure of custom to force them to lead thoroughly moral lives, hence only the naturally moral person will lead the moral life in a society of plastic standards. The problem of moral progress is therefore twofold: first, of creating flexible standards which will allow variation and adaptation to changing needs; second, of securing the preservation and perpetuation of a human stock that may be depended upon to lead moral lives without the necessity of much social compulsion.

In considering these problems, it should be noted that during the historical period there appears to have been little, if any, improvement in the innate mental constitution of man. While other animal species have advanced because of improvement in the stock, man's progress has been chiefly due to improvement in the content of Ms tradition, which, as generations have come and gone, has been worked over, until, by the gradual elimination of the superstitious, superfluous, irrational and inconsistent elements, it has become more elastic and better adapted to changing needs and interests. This progress can be well illustrated by a comparison of the content of the mind of primitive man with that of modern man. The tradition of many primitive groups is that disease is an object which can be driven or frightened away from the body of the sick person by proper charms, dances and alarming noises. After one of these grotesque ceremonies, the medicine man exhibits a quartz crystal which is supposed to represent the disease that he has taken from the person in the course of making him well. Compare this with the modern notion that disease is a disordered condition of the mind or body, and that by rest, proper food, care, drugs, and exercise, the body can be restored to a normal healthy condition. As a means to the end of curing the sick, the primitive method is quite wide of the mark, ridiculously crude as compared with the efficient methods of scientific medicine—vaccination, anti-toxin, antisepsis and aseptic methods. The difference between the two systems is simply that our modern methods are the result of a longer experience, during which, in the course of experiment, trial and failure, we have learned to eliminate many superfluous efforts and inconsistent practises. Thus the usages of civilized man are more efficient instruments to certain ends than are the customs of primitive men.