Men become interested in causes
for which they willingly risk their lives. But, except as these causes
are fanatical, off the real track of moral progress, they make for
human happiness. And the center of interest can never shift too far.
For not only is premature death, an evil in itself, it precludes the
cultivation of the humane pursuits that life might have allowed.
Men have to learn to find their happiness not in what saps health or
invites death, but in what makes for health and life. What definition
of morality emerges from this? The foregoing summary permits us to
formulate a definition of morality. Historically, there has been a
gradual, though not continuous, progress toward CODES OF CONDUCT WHICH
MAKE FOR THE PRESERVATION OF LIFE AND FOR HAPPINESS. These codes have
received an imaginative consecration, and all sorts of secondary
sanctions; but it is their underlying utility that is of ultimate
importance. Very simple and obvious causes have continually tended
to destroy customs which made in the contrary direction and to select
those which, however originating, made for either or both of these
two ends. It is these customs, important for the welfare of the
individual or tribe, which we call morality. If the original instincts
of mankind had been delicately enough adjusted to their needs, there
would have been no need of these secondary and overruling impulses,
and the differentiation of impulse and duty, of the natural and the
spiritual man, would never have arisen.
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