In the latest stages of man's development, conscious regard for law
and custom, the fear of gods, the explicit recognition of duty and
conscience, and the direct pursuit of ideals-all the reflective
considerations that we may lump together under the word
"conscientiousness"-play their ever increasing part and complicate
the psychological situation. But even in modern civilized man the
underlying animal forces count for far more. And without them the later
self-conscious forces would not have come into play at all. There is
a small class of people who are dominated throughout their activities
by consciously present ideals or obedience to religious injunctions.
But the average man still acts mainly under the pressure of the more
primitive forces which we have enumerated.
How far has the moralizing process been blind and how far conscious?
(1) To a very large extent the moralizing process has been a merely
mechanical one. Through slight differences in nerve-structure
individuals have varied a little in their response to the pressure
of inward cravings and outward perils. The braver, the more prudent,
the more industrious have had a better chance of survival. So by the
process which we have come to call natural selection there has been
a continual weeding-out of the relatively lazy, cowardly, reckless,
and imprudent. Much of our morality is the result of tendencies thus
long cultivated by the ruthless methods of nature; we inherit a complex
nervous organization, the outcome of ages of molding and selection,
which now instinctively and easily responds to stimuli with a certain
degree of inbred morality.
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