Dualistic ethics—The categorical imperative—Monistic ethics—Morals and adaptation—Variation and adaptation—Habit—Chemistry of habit—Trophic stimuli—Habit in inorganic bodies—Instincts—Social instincts—Instinct and morality—Right and duty—Morals and morality—The good and the bad—Morals and fashions—Sexual selection—Fashion and the feeling of shame—Fashion and reason—Ceremonies and cults—Mysteries and sacraments—Baptism—The Lord's Supper—Transubstantiation—The miracle of redemption—Papal sacraments—Marriage—Modern fashions—Honor—Phylogeny of morals.

The practical life of man is, like that of all the social higher animals, ruled by impulses and customs which we describe as "moral." The science of morality, ethics, is regarded by the dualists as a mental science, and closely connected with religion on the one hand and psychology on the other. During the nineteenth century this dualistic view retained its popularity especially because the great authority of Kant, with his dogma of the categorical imperative, seemed to have given it a solid foundation, and because it agreed admirably with the teaching of the Church. Monism, on the other hand, regards ethics as a natural science, and starts from the principle that morality is not supernatural in origin, but has been built up by adaptation of the social mammals to the conditions of existence, and thus may be traced eventually to physical laws. Hence modern biology sees no metaphysical miracle in morality, but the action of physiological functions.

Our whole modern civilization clings to the erroneous ideas which traditional morality, founded on revelation, and closely connected with ecclesiastical teaching, has imposed upon it. Christianity has taken over the ten commandments from Judaism, and blended them with a mystical Platonism into a towering structure of ethics. Kant especially lent support to it in recent years with his Critique of Practical Reason, and his three central dogmas. The close connection of these three dogmas with each other, and their positive influence on ethics, were particularly important through Kant formulating the further dogma of the categorical imperative.

The great authority which Kant's dualist philosophy obtained is largely owing to the fact that he subordinated pure reason to practical reason. The vague moral law for which Kant claimed absolute universality is expressed in his categorical imperative as follows: "So act that the maxim (or the subjective principle of your will) may at the same time serve as a general law." I have shown in the nineteenth chapter of the Riddle that this categorical imperative is, like the thing in itself, an outcome of dogmatic, not critical, principles. As Schopenhauer says:

Kant's categorical imperative is generally quoted in our day under the more modest and convenient title of "the moral law." The daily writers of compendiums think they have founded the science of ethics when they appeal to this apparently innate "moral law," and then build on it that wordy and confused tissue of phrases with which they manage to make the simplest and clearest features of life unintelligible, without having ever seriously asked themselves whether there really is any such convenient code of morality written in our head, breast, or heart. This broad cushion is snatched from under morality when we prove that Kant's categorical imperative of the practical reason is a wholly unjustified, baseless, and imaginative assumption.

Kant's categorical imperative is a mere dogma, and, like his whole theory of practical reason, rests on dogmatic and not critical grounds. It is a fiction of faith, and directly opposed to the empirical principles of pure reason.

The notion of duty, which the categorical imperative represents as a vague a priori law implanted in the human mind—a kind of moral instinct—can, as a matter of fact, be traced to a long series of phyletic modifications of the phronema of the cortex. Duty is a social sense that has been evolved a posteriori as a result of the complicated relations of the egoism of individuals and the altruism of the community. The sense of duty, or conscience, is the amenability of the will to the feeling of obligation, which varies very considerably in individuals.

A scientific study of the moral law, on the basis of physiology, evolution, ethnography, and history, teaches us that its precepts rest on biological grounds, and have been developed in a natural way. The whole of our modern morality and social and juridical order have evolved in the course of the nineteenth century out of the earlier and lower conditions which we now generally regard as things of the past. The social morality of the eighteenth century proceeded, in its turn, from that of the seventeenth and sixteenth centuries, and still further from that of the Middle Ages, with its despotism, fanaticism, Inquisition, and witch trials. It is equally clear from modern ethnography and the comparative psychology of races that the morality of barbarous races has been evolved gradually from the lower social rules of savage tribes, and that these differ only in degree, not in kind, from the instincts of the apes and other social vertebrates. The comparative psychology of the vertebrates shows, further, that the social instincts of the mammals and birds have arisen from the lower stages of the reptiles and amphibia, and these in turn from those of the fishes and the lowest vertebrates. Finally, the phylogeny of the vertebrates proves that this highly developed stem has advanced through a long series of invertebrate ancestors (chordonia, vermalia, gastrÆada) from the protists by a process of gradual modification. We find, even among these unicellulars (first protophyta, then protozoa), the important principle which lies at the base of morality, association, or the formation of communities. The adaptation of the united cell-individuals to each other and to the common environment is the physiological foundation of the first traces of morality among the protists. All the unicellulars that abandon their isolated eremitic lives, and unite to form communities, are compelled to restrict their natural egoism, and make concessions to altruism in the common interest. Even in the globular coenobia of volvox and magosphÆra the special form and movement and mode of reproduction are determined by the compromise between the egoistic instincts of the individual cells and the altruistic need of the community.

Morality, whether we take it in the narrower or broader sense, can always be traced to the physiological function of adaptation, which is closely connected through nutrition with the self-maintenance of the organism. The change in the plasm which adaptation brings about is always based on the chemical energy of metabolism (chapter ix.). Hence it will be as well to have a clear idea of the nature of adaptation. I defined it as follows in my General Morphology:

Adaptation or variation is a general physiological function of organisms, closely connected with their radical function of nutrition. It expresses itself in the fact that every organism may be modified by the influence of the environment, and may acquire characters which were wanting in its ancestors. The causes of this variability are chiefly found in a material correlation between parts of the organism and the outer world. Variability or adaptability is not, therefore, a special organic function, but depends on the material, physico-chemical process of nutrition.

I have developed this conception of adaptation in the tenth chapter of the History of Creation.

The nature of the adaptation and its relation to variation are often conceived in different ways from that I have defined. Quite recently Ludwig Plate has restricted the idea, and understood by adaptation only variations that are useful to the organism. He severely criticises my broader definition, and calls it "a palpable error," suggesting that I only retain it because I am not open to conviction. If I wanted to return this grave charge, I might point to Plate's one-sided and perverse treatment of my biogenetic law. Instead of doing this I will only observe that I think the restriction of adaptation to useful variations is untenable and misleading. There are in the life of man and of other organisms thousands of habits and instincts that are not useful, but either indifferent or injurious to the organism, yet certainly come under the head of adaptation, are maintained by heredity, and modify the form. We find adaptations of all sorts—partly useful, partly indifferent, partly injurious (the result of education, training, distortion, etc.)—in the life of man, and the domestic animals and plants. I need only refer to the influence of fashion and the school. Even the origin of the useless (and often injurious) rudimentary organs depends on adaptation.

Habit is a second nature, says an old proverb. This is a profound truth, the full appreciation of which came to us through Lamarck's theory of descent. The formation of a habit consists in the frequent repetition of one physiological act, and so is in principle reducible to cumulative or functional adaptation. Through this frequent repetition of one and the same act, which is closely connected with the memory of the plasm, a permanent modification is caused, either in a positive or a negative sense; positively the organ is developed and strengthened by exercise, negatively it is atrophied or enfeebled by disuse. When this accumulation of slight changes continues, the effect of adaptation goes so far in time as to produce new organs by progressive modification, or to cause actual organs to become useless and rudimentary, and finally disappear, owing to regressive metamorphosis.

When we make a careful study of the simpler processes of habit in the lower organisms, we see that they depend, like all other adaptations, on chemical changes in the plasm, and that these are provoked by trophic stimuli—that is to say, by external action on the metabolism. As Ostwald rightly says: "The most important function of organisms is the conversion of the various chemical energies into each other. The chemical energy that is taken into the organism as food is not generally capable of being applied directly to its purposes, but needs some further preparation. Every cell is a chemical laboratory, in which the most varied reactions take place without fires and retorts. The most frequently employed means in this is probably the catalytic acceleration of the usable and the catalytic retardation of the useless reactions. As a proof of this we have the regular presence of these enzyma in all organisms." In this the greatest importance attaches to memory, which I regard with Hering as a general property of living substance, "in virtue of which certain processes in the living being leave effects behind them that facilitate the repetition of the processes." I agree with Ostwald that "the importance of this property cannot be exaggerated. In its more general forms it effects adaptation and heredity, in its highest development the conscious memory." While the latter, and consciousness in general, reach the highest stage in the mental life of civilized man, the adaptation of the monera remains at the lowest stage. Among the latter the bacteria especially, which have assumed the most varied and important relations to other organisms in spite of the simplicity of their structure, show that this manifold adaptation depends on the formation of habits in the plasm, and is solely based on their chemical energy, or their invisible molecular structure. Once more the monera form a connecting link between the organic and inorganic; they fill up the deep gulf, from the point of view of energy, that seems to yawn between "animated" organisms and "lifeless" bodies.

According to the prevailing view, habit is a purely biological process, but there are processes even in inorganic nature which come under this head in the broader sense. Ostwald gives the following illustration:

If we take two equal tubes of thin nitric acid and dissolve a little metallic copper in one of them, the liquid will acquire the power to dissolve a second piece of the same metal more quickly than the one that remains unchanged. The cause of this phenomenon—which may be observed in the same way with mercury or silver and nitric acid—is that the lower oxydes of nitrogen that are formed in dissolving the metal accelerate the action of the nitric acid catalytically on the fresh metal. The same effect is produced if you put part of these oxydes in the acid; it then acts much more rapidly than pure acid. The formation of a habit consists, therefore, in the production of a catalytic acceleration during the reaction.

We may not only compare inorganic habit with organic adaptation, which we call habit or practice, but also with "imitation," which implies a catalytic transfer of habits to socially united living beings.

By instincts were formerly understood, as a rule, the unconscious impulses of animals which led to purposive actions, and it was believed that every species of animal had special instincts implanted in it by the Creator. Animals were thought, according to Descartes's view, to be unconscious machines whose actions proceed with unvarying constancy in the particular form that God had ordained. Although this antiquated theory of instinct is still taught by many dualistic metaphysicians and theologians, it has long since been demolished by the monistic theory of evolution. Lamarck had observed that most instincts are formed by habit and adaptation, and then transmitted by heredity. Darwin and Romanes especially showed afterwards that these inherited habits are subject to the same laws of variation as other physiological functions. However, Weismann has recently taken great pains in his Lectures on the Theory of Descent (xxiii.) to refute this idea, and in general the hypothesis of an inheritance of acquired characters, because it will not harmonize with his theory of the germ-plasm. Ernst Heinrich Ziegler, who has recently (1904) published a subtle analysis of former and present ideas of instinct, agrees with Weismann that "all instincts are due to selection, and that they have their roots not in the practice of the individual life, but in the variations of the germ." But where else can we find the cause of these "germ-variations" except in the laws of direct and indirect adaptation? In my opinion, it is just the reverse; the remarkable phenomena of instinct yield a mass of evidence of progressive heredity, completely in the sense of Lamarck and Darwin.

The great majority of organisms live social lives, and so are united by the link of common interests. Of all the relations which determine the existence of the species, the chief are those which bind the individual to other individuals of the species. This is at once clear from the laws of sexual propagation. Moreover, the association of individuals is a great advantage in the struggle for existence. In the case of the higher animals this association becomes particularly important, because it is accompanied by an extensive division of labor. Then arises the antithesis of the personal egoism and the communal altruism; and in human societies the opposition of the two instincts is all the greater when reason recognizes that each has a right to satisfaction. Social habits become moral habits, and their laws are afterwards taught as sacred duties, and form the basis of the juridical order.

The morals of nations, so rich in psychological and sociological interest, are nothing more than social instincts, acquired by adaptation, and passed on from generation to generation by heredity. An attempt has been made to distinguish between the two kinds of habit by describing the instincts of animals as constant vital functions based on their physical organization, and the habits or morals of human beings as mental powers maintained by a spiritual tradition. This distinction has, however, been excluded by the modern physiological teaching that men's morals are, like all their other psychic functions, based physiologically on the organization of their brain. The habits of the individual man, which have been formed by adaptation to his personal conditions, become hereditary in his family; and these family usages can no more be sharply distinguished from the general morals of the community than these can be from the precepts of the Church and the laws of the state.

When a certain habit is regarded by all the members of a community as important, its cultivation favored and its breach punished, it is raised to the position of a duty. This is true even in the case of the herds of mammals (apes, gregarious carnivora, and ungulates) and the flocks of social birds (hens, geese, ducks). The laws which have been formed in these cases by the higher development of social instincts are particularly striking and equivalent to those of savage tribes when conspicuous individuals (old or strong males) have acquired a leadership of the troop, and successfully insure the observance of the proper habits or duties. Many of these organized bands are in some respects higher than the savages at the lowest stages who live in isolated families, or only form loose temporary associations of a few families. The great progress made by comparative psychology and ethnology, and historical and prehistorical research, in the second half of the nineteenth century, confirms us in the conviction that a long scale of intermediate stages joins the rudiments of law in the social primates and other mammals to the sense of law in the lower savage, and this again to that of the barbarian and the civilized human being—right up to the science of law in modern Europe.

Like civil laws, the commands of religion come originally from the morals of the savage, and eventually from the social instincts of the primates. The important province of mental life to which we give the vague name of religion was developed at an early stage among the prehistoric races from whom we all descend. When we study its origin from the point of view of empirical psychology and monistic evolution, we find that religion has arisen polyphyletically from different sources—ancestor worship, the desire of personal immortality, the craving for a causal explanation of phenomena, superstition of various kinds, the strengthening of the moral law by the authority of a divine law-giver, etc. According as the imagination of the savage or the barbarian followed one or other of these lines it raised up hundreds of religious forms. Only a few of them survived in the struggle for existence, and acquired (at least outwardly) dominion over the modern mind. But as independent and impartial science advances in our time, religion is purified of superstition and turns more and more to morality.

The obedience to the "divine commands" which religion demands of its followers is often transferred by human society to rules that have arisen from social customs of subordinate kinds. Thus we get the familiar confusion of manners and morals, of conventional outer deportment and real inner morality. The ideas of good and bad, morality and immorality, are subjected to arbitrary definitions. In this a great part is played by the moral pressure which is exercised by conventional ideas in the social body on the conduct and minds of its members. However clearly and rationally the individual thinks about the important questions of practical life, he has to yield to the tyranny of traditional and often quite irrational customs. As a matter of fact, both in life and in the nature of the case practical reason does take that precedence of pure reason which Kant claimed.

The tyranny of custom in practical life does not depend merely on the authority of social usage, but also on the power of selection. Just as natural selection insures the relative constancy of the specific form in the origin of the animal and plant species, so it has a powerful effect on the origin of morals and customs. An important factor in this is mimetic adaptation, or mimicry, the aping or imitating of certain forms or fashions by various classes of animals. This is unconscious in the case of many orders of insects, butterflies, beetles, hymenoptera, etc. When insects of a certain family come to resemble in their outer form and color and design those of another family, they obtain the protection or other advantages which these particular characters give in the struggle for life. Darwin, Wallace, Weismann, Fritz MÜller, Bates, and others, have shown in numbers of instances how the origin of these deceptive resemblances can be traced to natural selection, and how important they are in the formation of the species. But many customs and usages in human life arise in just the same way, partly by conscious and partly by unconscious imitation. Of these the varying external forms which we call "fashions" have a most important influence in practical life. The phrase "fashion-ape," when used in a scientific sense, is not merely an expression of contempt, but has also a profound meaning; it correctly indicates the origin of fashions by imitation, and also the peculiar resemblance we find in this respect between man and his cousins, the apes. Sexual selection among the primates has a good deal to do with this.

The great importance which Darwin ascribes in his Descent of Man to the Æsthetic selection of the respective sexes is equally true of man and of all the higher vertebrates that have a feeling of beauty, especially the amniotes (mammals, birds, and reptiles). The beautiful coloring and marking and ornamentation which distinguish the males from the females are due entirely to the careful individual selection of the former by the latter. Thus the various kinds of ornamental hair (beard, hair of head, etc.), the tint of the face, the peculiar form of the lips, nose, ears, etc., are to be explained, as we find them in man and the male ape; also the brilliant plumage of the humming-bird, the bird of paradise, pheasant, etc. I have dealt fully with these interesting facts in the eleventh chapter of the History of Creation, and must refer the reader thereto. I will only point out here how valuable the whole of this chapter of Darwinism is for the understanding of the foundation of species on the one hand and men's fashions and customs on the other. It is most closely connected with ethical problems.

The growth of fashion in civilized life is very important, not only for the development of the sense of beauty and for the sexual selection of the sexes, but also in connection with the origin of the feeling of shame and the finer psychological traits that relate to it. The lower savages have no more sense of shame than animals or children. They are quite naked, and accomplish the sexual act without the slightest trace of shame. The beginning of clothing which we find among the middle savages is not due to a sense of shame, but partly to low temperature (in the polar regions), partly to vanity and love of decoration (such as ornamenting the ears, lips, nose, and sex-organs by the insertion of shells, pieces of wood, flowers, stones, etc.). Afterwards the sense of shame sets in, and we have the covering of certain parts of the body with leaves, girdles, shirts, etc. In most nations the sexual parts are the first to be covered; though some attach importance to the veiling of the face. In many Oriental tribes (especially Mohammedan) it is still the first precept of female chastity to veil the face (the most characteristic part of the individual), while the rest of the body may remain naked. Generally speaking, the Æsthetic and psychological relations of the sexes play the chief part in the higher development of morals. Morality is often taken to be synonymous with the law of sexual intercourse.

As the features of civilized life advance, the influence of reason increases, and so does the power of hereditary tradition and the moral ideas associated with it. The result is a severe conflict between the two. Reason seeks to judge everything by its own standard, to learn the causes of phenomena and direct practical life accordingly. On the other hand tradition, or "good morals," looks at everything from the point of view of our forefathers and other venerable laws and religious precepts. It is indifferent to the independent discoveries of reason and the real causes of things. It demands that the practical life of every individual be framed in accordance with the hereditary morality of the race or state. Thus we get the inevitable conflict between reason and tradition, or science and religion, which continues in our own day. Sometimes in the course of it a "new fashion" is substituted for some sacred tradition, a transitory custom that succeeds in imposing itself by its novelty or curiosity; and when this has contrived to win general acceptance, or has gained the support of Church or state to some extent, it is regarded in much the same light as the older morality.

The lowest races of the present time (for instance, the pithecoid pygmies, the Veddahs of Ceylon, the Akkas of Central Africa) are very little higher than their primate ancestors in mental development. This is also true of their habits of life and morals. As their ideas are for the most part concrete and sensual, their power of forming abstract concepts is very little developed; they have hardly any religious ideas to speak of. But with the middle savages we begin to find the craving to know the causes of things and the idea of spirits that are concealed behind the phenomena of sense. Dread of these leads to worship, fetichism, and animism, the beginning of religion. Even at this early stage of worship we find certain customs associated with the cult to which a symbolical or mysterious meaning is given. These ceremonies lead on in the higher races to the great religious festivities, which the Greeks called "mysteries." Sensual images of various kinds are mixed up in them with supersensual ideas and superstitions. The festivals, processions, dances, hymns, and sacrifices of all sorts that form part of the cult are more or less concerned with the mysterious, and are therefore considered "holy." They are often made the pretext of sensual gratifications, which end in gross immorality and orgies.

From the older pagan and Jewish religious usages were afterwards developed in the Christian Church those parts of the cult which are known as sacraments. These miraculous sacraments, by the mysterious action of which man is supposed to be born again or regenerated, very quickly became powerful instruments in the hand of the Church and thorny problems for theologians, especially after Gregory the Great introduced the dogmas of Purgatory and the relieving power of the Mass. According to St. Thomas of Aquin, the sacraments are channels that convey the grace of God to sinful man. The papal authorities fixed their number at seven (baptism, eucharist, penance, confirmation, matrimony, orders, and extreme unction) in the twelfth century. The superstitious content of these sacraments was generally lost sight of in the glamour of their ceremonious side, but their authority was unshaken. Since the Reformation the Protestants have retained only the two chief sacraments which were founded by Christ himself—Baptism and the Lord's Supper.

In view of the extreme importance of the life of the family as a foundation of social and civic life, it is advisable to consider marriage from the biological point of view, as an orderly method of reproduction. Here, as in all other sociological and psychological questions, we must be careful not to accept the present features of civilized life as a general standard of judgment. We have to take a comparative view of its various stages, as we find them among barbarians and savages. When we do this impartially, we see at once that reproduction, as a purely physiological process having for its end the maintenance of the species, takes place in just the same way among uncultivated races as among the anthropoid apes. We may even say that many of the higher animals, especially monogamous mammals and birds, have reached a higher stage than the lower savages; the tender relations of the two sexes towards each other, their common care of their young, and their family life, have led to the development of higher sexual and domestic instincts, to which we may fitly ascribe a moral character. Wilhelm BÖlsche has shown, in his Life of Love in Nature, how a long series of remarkable customs has been developed in the animal world by adaptation to various forms of reproduction. Westermarck has pointed out, in his History of Marriage, how the crude animal forms of marriage current among savages have been gradually elevated as we rise to higher races. As the sensual pleasure of generation is combined with the finer psychological feeling of sympathy and psychic attachment, the latter gains constantly on the former, and this refined love becomes one of the richest sources of the higher spiritual functions, especially in art and poetry. Marriage itself, of course, remains a physiological act, a wonder of life, with the organic sex impulse as its chief foundation. As the conclusion of marriage represents one of the most important moments in human life, we find it accompanied by symbolic ceremonies and festive rites even among lower tribes. The immense variety of marriage festivals shows how this important act has appealed to the imagination. Priests quickly recognized this, and decked out marriage with all kinds of ceremonies and turned it to the advantage of their Church. While the Catholic Church raised it to the status of a sacrament and ascribed to it an "indelible" character, it declared that it was indissoluble when performed according to ecclesiastical rite. This unwholesome influence of Romanism, this dependence of matrimony on religious mysteries and ceremonies, and difficulty of obtaining divorce, etc., still continue in our day. It is only a short time since the German Reichstag, under the influence of the Centre [Catholic] party, added laws to its civic code which increase instead of lessening the difficulty of obtaining divorce. Reason demands the liberation of marriage from ecclesiastical pressure. It demands that matrimony be grounded on mutual love, esteem, and devotion, and that it at the same time be counted a social contract, and be protected, as civil marriage, by proper legislation. But when the contracting parties find (as so often happens) that they have mistaken each other's character, and that they do not suit each other, they should be free to dissolve the bond. The pressure which comes of marriage being regarded as a sacrament, and which prevents the dissolution of unhappy marriages, is merely a source of vice and crime.

We find in many other features of our social life, besides marriage, a contradiction between the demands of reason and the traditional usages which modern civilization has taken over as a heritage from earlier and lower nations, and partly from barbarians and savages. In the public life of states this contradiction is much more striking than in the private life of the family or the individual. Whereas the milder teaching of the Christian religion—sympathy, love of one's fellows, patience, and devotion—has had a good influence in many ways, there can be no question of this in the international relations of the nations; here we find pure egoism. Every nation seeks to take advantage of others by cunning or force, and, wherever possible, to subjugate them: if they will not consent, the brute force of war is employed. Social misery of all kinds spreads wider and wider, almost in proportion as civilization develops. Alexander Sutherland is right when he characterizes "the leading nations of Europe and their offshoots" (in the United States) as lower civilized races. In some respects we are still barbarians.

How far the bulk of modern nations still are from the ideal and the reign of pure reason can be seen by a glance at the social, juridical, and ecclesiastical condition of "these leading nations of Europe," either Teutonic or Latin. We need only consider with an unprejudiced mind the accounts in our journals of parliamentary and legal proceedings, government measures and social relations, in order to realize that the force of tradition and fashion is immense, and resists the claims of reason on every side. This is most clearly seen externally in the power of fashion, especially as regards clothing. There is a good ground for the complaint about "the tyranny of fashion." However unpractical, ridiculous, ugly, and costly a new garment may be, it becomes popular if it is patronized by authority, or some clever manufacturer succeeds in imposing it by specious advertisements. We need only recall the crinoline of fifty years ago, the bustle of twenty years ago, and the exposure of the breast and back by low dresses (with the object of sexual excitement) which was the fashion of forty years ago.[11] For centuries we have had the pernicious fashion of the corset, an article that is as offensive from the Æsthetic as from the hygienic point of view. Thousands of women are sacrificed every year to this pitiful fashion, through disease of the liver or lungs; nevertheless, the craze for the hour-glass shape of the female form continues, and the reform of clothing makes little headway. It is just the same with numbers of fashions in the home and in society, of devices in commerce and laws in the state. Everywhere the demands of reason advance little in their struggle with the venerable usages of tradition.

A false sense of honor dominates our social life, just as a false sense of modesty controls our clothing. The true honor of man or woman consists in their inner moral dignity, in the determination to do only what they conceive to be good and right, not in the outer esteem of their fellows or in the worthless praise of a conventional society. Unfortunately, we have to admit that in this respect we are still largely ruled by the foolish views of a lower civilization, if not of crude barbarians.

In many other features of our life besides this false modesty and false honor we perceive the force of social usage. Many of what are thought to be honorable customs are relics of barbarism; much of our morality is, in the light of pure reason, downright immorality. As even the latter is due to adaptation, and as the same custom may be at one time thought useful and fitting, at another time injurious and bad, we see again that it is impossible to restrict the idea of adaptation to useful variations. We may say the same of the changing rules of education, commerce, legislation, and so on. The ideal in all departments of life is pure reason; but it has to struggle long against the current prejudices and customs, which find their chief support in the superstitions of the Church and the conservative tendencies of the state. In this state of Byzantine immorality, decorating itself so often with the mantle of piety, practical materialism flourishes, while monism, or theoretical materialism, is thrust aside.

If we sum up all that monistic science has taught us as to the origin and development of morality, we may put it in the following series of propositions: 1. By adaptation to different conditions of life the simple plasm of the earliest organisms, the archigonous monera, undergoes certain modifications. 2. As the living plasm reacts on these influences, and the reaction is often repeated, a habit is formed (as in the catalysis of certain inorganic chemical processes). 3. This habit is hereditary, the repeated impressions being fixed in the nucleus (or caryoplasm) in the case of the unicellulars. 4. When hereditary transmission lasts through many generations, and is strengthened by cumulative adaptation, it becomes an instinct. 5. Even in the protist coenobia (the cell-communities of the protophyta and protozoa) social instincts are formed by association of cells. 6. The antithesis of the individual and social instinct, or of egoism and altruism, increases in the animal kingdom in proportion to the development of psychic activity and social life. 7. In the higher social animals definite customs arise in this way, and these become rights and duties when obedience to them is demanded by the society (herd, flock, people) and the breach of them punished. 8. Savage races at the lowest stage, without religion, are not differently related to their customs than the higher social animals. 9. The higher savages develop religious ideas, combine their superstitious practices (fetichism and animism) with ethical principles, and transform their empirical moral laws into religious commands. 10. Among barbaric, and more particularly among civilized, races definite moral laws are formed by the association of these hereditary religious, moral, and legal ideas. 11. In the civilized races the Church formulates the religious commands, and jurisprudence the legal commands, in more definitely binding forms; the advancing mind remains, however, subject in many respects to Church and state. 12. In the higher civilized nations pure reason gains more and more influence on practical life, and thrusts back the authority of tradition; on the basis of biological knowledge a rational or monistic ethic is developed.

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