Sir H. Maine, Village Communities. C. Darwin, Descent of
Man, part I, chap. v. J. G. Schurman, Ethical Import of Darwinism.
W. I. Thomas, Source Book for Social Origins, part VII. C. Read,
Natural and Social Morals, chap. VI. I. King, Development of Religion,
chap. XI. On the question of moral progress: Dewey and Tufts, Ethics,
pp. 187-92. W. Bagehot, Physics and Politics, chap. VI. H. G. Wells,
New Worlds for Old, chap.I, secs. 2-4. J. Bryce, in the Atlantic Monthly,
vol. 100, p. 145. E. Root, The Citizen's Part in Government, pp. 96-123.
J. S. Mackenzie, Manual of Ethics (2d ed.), chap. XV. A. R. Wallace,
Social Environment and Moral Progress.
CHAPTER IV
INWARD DEVELOPMENT--CONSCIENCE
What are the stages in the history of moral guidance?
THERE may be said to be five stages in the history of moral guidance:
guidance by instinct, by custom, by law and precept, by conscience,
and by insight. No one of these guides is discarded with the development
of the others; we rely today upon all of them in varying degree. Their
evolution overlaps; the alteration of instinct still goes on, changing
laws and customs still bring their pressure to bear from without upon
the individual; while our conscience and our insight have their roots
far back in the past. Yet the prominence of each of these factors in
turn marks a successive stage in the evolution of moral control.
Inherited instinct, and then custom, unconsciously passed on by
imitation and to some extent taught with a dimly conscious purpose,
shape the crude morality of the animals though the other means of
guidance are not wholly absent even in them.
Pages:
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63