Why did not the individualizing of conscience occur
earlier?
(1) In primitive man there is not much opportunity for the development
of individuality. There are few personal possessions, there is little
scope for the exercise of peculiar talents, there is little power of
reflection, to develop strongly individual ideas. The self-assertive
instincts are to considerable extent still dormant for lack of stimulus
to call them forth. The individual is content to take his place in
the group life, and it seldom occurs to him to question the group-
judgment.
(2) In primitive life there is a drastic repression of any incipient
rebelliousness, through the enforcement of custom or explicit law in
the ways we have indicated; the fear of a heavy discouragement to any
innovator. If men dared to defy the community morals, they were very
likely to be put to death before the habit of free judgment had much
time to spread. There was thus a sort of artificial selection for
survival of the conventional type, and weeding-out of the freethinker
and moral genius. Even in historic times this process has continued
and been an enormous clog on human progress. The man of revolutionary
moral insight has had to pay the penalty, if not of death as in
the case of Socrates or of Jesus-at least of ridicule and ostracism,
of excommunication and isolation as, in our own day, with Tolstoy.
Many and many a saint who might have been a beacon-light to mankind
has lived under the curses or sneers of his fellows and died in
loneliness, to be soon forgotten.
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