PART I
THE EVOLUTION OF MORALITY
CHAPTER I
THE ORIGIN OP PERSONAL MORALITY
In almost any field it is wise to precede definition by an impartial
survey of the subject matter. So if we are to form an unbiased
conception of what morality is, it will be safest to consider first
what the morals of men actually have been, how they came into being,
and what function they have served in human life. Thus we shall be
sure that our theory is in touch with reality, and be saved from mere
closet-philosophies and irrelevant speculations. Our task in this First
Part will be not to criticize by reference to any ethical standards,
but to observe and describe, as a mere bit of preliminary sociology,
what it is in their lives to which men have given the name "morality,"
of what use it has been, and through the action of what forces it has
tended to develop. With these data in mind, we shall be the better
able, in the Second Part, to formulate our criteria for judging the
different codes of morality; we shall find that we are but making
explicit and conscious the considerations that, unexpressed and
unrealized, have been the persistent and underlying factors in their
development. How early in the evolutionary process did personal
morality of some sort emerge? Of course the words (in any language)
and the explicit conceptions "morality," "duty," "right," "wrong," etc,
are very late in appearance, presupposing as they do a power of
reflection and abstraction which develops only in man and with a
considerable civilization.
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