THE EVOLUTION OF HUMAN MORALITY
In treating of the subject of the moral sense as observed in lower
animals, in an outlined manner, I trust that I have made it sufficiently
clear that morality is not an exclusively human characteristic, nor is
there a breach in continuity in its evolution from lower animals to man.
We know that the faculties which are concerned with the evolution of the
moral sense are numerous. In the previous chapters I have dealt only
with a few of them. One of great importance I must again refer to
because of its bearing on the evolution of the conception of the
[Sidenote: _Faculty of Imagination, the tap-root of superstition_]
Supernatural. This faculty is _Imagination_. It is the tap-root of
superstition, and, as we have seen, arises also in the minds of the
lower animals. Superstition in turn is the tap-root of all the various
so-called theologies which have evolved without breach of continuity
from the time of primeval man down to the present day. Each system has
borrowed considerably from its predecessor, so that systems of
theologies are for the most part grafts of other systems of theologies.
A form of “morality” in its upward growth must needs have accompanied
these systems hand in hand, because they contained dictates regarding
the meaning of Right and Wrong given forth through human instrumentality
by supposed Supernatural Beings, often anthropomorphous, that is
possessed of definite human attributes.
The term “theology” may be assigned to these systems because they
discourse upon God. But, since they set out to define the undefinable
and know the unknowable, in dogmatic accents, and thereby to deal with
phenomena which not only transcend but are by their very nature at
variance with experience and violate natural law, it is to be expected
that those of us, who, by a process of unbiassed and rational reasoning
founded on historical evidences and scientific facts, have departed
from subscribing to the tenets of such systems, must seek after God,
that is to say found our theological philosophy along other lines of
thought. I mention this here because it is insisted by many that,
unless one adopts a systematized creed founded upon dogmas, religion
becomes cold and boneless. Far from this being the case, I hold that
[Sidenote: _The religious sense of the Biologist_]
the religious sense tends to heighten and acquire permanent vigour,
as the years of our life roll on, the deeper we study the biological
sciences, especially Anthropology. And naturally enough. For we are
brought into direct communion with God’s own works. _God and Nature are
to us the one Great Power._ It is the wonderful Force which appeals to
our religious sense, and as Naturalists we set to work to analyse this
and see for ourselves the vast benevolence――despite adversities――which
is contained therein. In our country rambles, in the laboratory,
anywhere and everywhere when we follow the truths of Nature, the
religious sense, if it be in us at all, must grow, ripen, and act as
our guide in conduct. Ecclesiasticism――the bulwark of supernatural
theology――may dictate her code of morals, but morality can exist apart
from Ecclesiasticism. Morality apart from natural theology leaves us
nowhere; indeed, morality joins hands and becomes an integral part of
natural theology. By relinquishing dogmatic creeds with their systems
of external authority, of rewards, of punishments, etc., which are
to many of us an incubus, _we have_ (in our endeavours to follow out
the best ethical code of life) _the study of God presented to us in a
beautiful, pure and simple form_. It may be said that this procedure
reduces our creed to mere Agnosticism; no doubt, though I cannot call
this a reduction but rather an expansion of religious thought. For
[Sidenote: _The Agnostic attitude_]
Agnosticism, an attitude rather than a creed, is nevertheless other
than a _non est_. We can define the agnostic position in Huxley’s
words: “that we know nothing that may be beyond phenomena ... that a
man shall not say he knows or believes that which he has no scientific
grounds for professing to know or believe”; concerning which Samuel
Laing says: “that is not a positive or an aggressive creed, and is
reconcilable with any form of moral, intellectual, or religious belief
which is not dogmatic――i.e. which does not attempt to impose on us some
hard and fast theory of the Universe, based on attempts to define the
undefinable and explain the unknowable.”
It seems an incalculable gain to have reached this stage of thought,
and to have set aside the idea of an anthropomorphic God, in whom
some imperfections must be manifest if we, human creatures, fettered
by finite thought, would fain place attributes upon the Infinite.
Is it not the essence of true religion and morality to think and
reflect upon God, or the Good in the purely abstract sense, while we
endeavour to act as Social and Ethical Beings; to make the best of
adverse circumstances, and to banish from our minds that ingrained
superstition――_Fear of the Supernatural_?
[Sidenote: _Evolution of Agnostic Theology_]
But as many of us have not reached this stage and still adhere to the
dictates of anthropomorphic deities, and inasmuch as natural theology
has in itself evolved from supernatural theology, there can be no real
antithesis between one and the other, no more than there is between
the protoplasm and essence of life in the jelly-fish and in that of
man. The fact that quarrels arise, and highly-strung religious cults
split up into sects, reminds us of the splitting up of many social
animals of a given species into tribes, which also wage war. There
seems to exist even among the most tolerant of sectarianists a sort of
[Sidenote: _Struggle for the Existence of Immortality_]
struggle for the existence of Immortality, as there is a struggle for
earthly existence. Let us, therefore, as Naturalists, in other than a
contentious spirit, take a glance at the upgrowth of superstition, and
the morality it has carried with it from the dim past to the present.
Let us, indeed, regard the evolution of theology as an inherent
instinct or inherited experience in the Natural History of Man, which
will likely go on for an immensely long era yet to come. By such a
process of study I think we shall be enabled to take the wisest and
most dispassionate view regarding the morality associated with present
day systems of religions based upon the dictates of external authority.
To return to consider the faculty of Imagination. I have made reference
to this in the case of the Dog, and perhaps may be pardoned if I
briefly do so again, as at this juncture such a reference will help
us to lead up to what directly follows regarding the origin of the
conception of the Supernatural. In his _Modern Science and Modern
Thought_ Samuel Laing remarks: “Later in life, and in more serious
matters, the dog has certainly the germs of higher intelligence, and
does a number of things which require a certain exercise of reasoning
power. He has a good memory, and imagination enough to be excited
[Sidenote: _Dogs and Dreams_]
at the prospects of a walk where there is a chance of finding a rat
or a rabbit, and to dream of chasing imaginary rabbits when he is
lying curled up upon the hearthrug.... Every good ghost-story begins
by describing how the dogs howled and cringed at their master’s
feet when the first shadow of supernatural presence was cast on the
haunted castle.” Now, while the imaginative faculty of dogs may not be
sufficiently developed to reflect on past dreams, or even to remember
them at all (though we have no reason to prove the contrary), still,
assuming such, it is very unlikely that primeval man, so much higher
and removed zoologically speaking by so many gaps from the dog, did
not reconsider these visions during the waking state. _Herbert Spencer
insists that dreams probably led to the belief in, in fact were, the_
[Sidenote: _Dreams the fount of Dualistic existence_]
_origin of dualistic ideas._ The dream is the spirit or shadowy self
which in sleep leaves the body, walks, talks, and appears in many and
varied scenes, and returns to the body as it awakes. In its last
sleep of death this spirit becomes a ghost which haunts its former
habitations, generally it is supposed with evil purposes, and to
prevent it doing mischief it has to be propitiated. Thus became evolved
the sacrifices and offerings, and the burial of food and implements
with the corpse to induce the ghost to keep quietly in the grave, and
so on. It would seem that the dualistic idea appeared at a very remote
age in the history of man, and it is wonderful with what tenacity,
extending as it does over periods of hundreds of thousands of years
[Sidenote: _The Fearful in the Supernatural_]
right down to the present day, the belief in ghosts survives. Its
universality in days gone by would tend to render this mental state
the more transmissible. Here then we see the first indications of the
_Fearful_ in the Supernatural. And this would become more intensified
as the belief in a future state began to present itself before the mind
of the savage. For, as communities became larger and more organized,
the strong man of the tribe would continue to force his followers to
greater submission, and, when deified at death, this submission would
still be paid him lest he should take vengeance unexpectedly. Next
we behold primitive man reflecting on the awe-inspiring destructive
forces of Nature. Peals of thunder, flashes of lightning, earthquakes,
volcanoes, prairie and forest fires, storms and floods, were evidences
of the wrath of the Supernatural. The unseen agencies were God-Devils:
good when they behaved themselves and brought happiness; bad when they
manifested fury and caused destruction. At this stage man reflected
but little on a future state; during his bodily existence he was in
heaven when happy; in hell when miserable. As the imagination ripened
the God-Devil was reflected upon to a greater extent and the evidence
of his existence portrayed itself in many tangible objects, animate
and inanimate; at the same time we see a tendency to split off the
two deified components, the God usually entering the more attractive
and harmless, the Devil the more obnoxious and subtle creatures. But
[Sidenote: _Evolution of God and Devil from common ancestor_]
for ages this worship of Animism remained in a state of chaos; gods
becoming devils and _vice versa_, and from natural creatures the
conception of mythical monsters sprang up, the imaginative faculty
becoming so fertile that the manipulative power of modelling these as
idols in wood and stone developed to an extraordinary degree. A step in
advance of Animism brings us on to Totemism, in which form of worship
animals could think and speak and were, indeed, men in a different
[Sidenote: _Totemism and its survivals_]
form. They were looked up to and regarded as heads of tribes and
families, and finally as ancestors. Some tribes of Red Indians believe
that they have descended from the Elk, others from the Bear, others
from the Fox, others from the Beaver, and so on from other animals. In
his _Human Origins_ Samuel Laing points out that the “animal worship
of Egypt has been probably a survival of the old faiths in totems,
differing among different clans, which were so firmly rooted in the
popular traditions, that the priests had to accommodate their religious
conceptions to it, as the Christian Fathers did with so many pagan
superstitions. The division of the twelve tribes of Israel seems also
to have been originally totemic, judging from the old saga in which
[Sidenote: _Modern crests and totemism_]
Jacob gives them his blessing, identifying Judah with a lion, Dan
with an adder, and so on. And, even at the present day, the crest of
the Duke of Sutherland carries us back to the time when the wild-cat
was the badge, and very probably some great and fierce wild cat the
ancestor, in popular belief, of the fighting clan Chattan.”
And now we see Man――his mind still in the cradle of his infancy――gazing
upward and beholding in the starry heavens many strange and weird forms
in constellations and other stellar groups: out of these sprang the
[Sidenote: _Astronomical myths_]
conception of personified astronomical myths. This is an important era
in the imaginative faculty of Man, seeing that so many of the legends,
which form the basis of dogmatic creeds of civilized nations within
historic times (but dating as far back as the time of the ancient
Egyptians, and as recently as current Christianity) are accepted with
purblind faith and regarded as literally and absolutely true facts.
However, before arriving at the period of written history, let us ask
ourselves what was the code of human morals in the crudely savage and
[Sidenote: _Moral Sense in Pre-historic man_]
superstitious ages. Was Man then possessed of moral sense? Assuredly
so. For as we have seen in the lower animals that many moral faculties
were manifest, so also have these been transmitted by evolution to Man
in whom they have become more elaborated. And before we ask how the
moral sense arose, we wish to know if Man, at the dawn of existence,
differed much in moral character from his more humble compatriots. The
answer seems plain enough. For, seeing that his imaginative faculty was
more fertile and that he had the power of reflecting on the visions
of night and upon effects produced by unseen agencies, and that these
haunted him, he became the victim of _fear_ and _timidity_. Handicapped
by such a mental state, he directed his conduct to concerted action,
and the gathering of his clans gave strength and support in the
struggle for life. As he possessed already then a fundamental or
instinctive moral sense comparable to that possessed by a dog, only
accentuated by a greater development of his imaginative faculty, we, at
this juncture naturally ask: What is then the derivative of that moral
sense common to all Nature’s creatures?
I have shewn in previous pages that a fundamental moral sense is not
wanting even in solitary predatory animals, the outcome of which is
that _a happy existence can for the most part be permitted to living
creatures in general_. And when we consider that the non-predatory
[Sidenote: _Nature’s ways tend not to Cruelty_]
animals are usually taken by surprise by those, who in the struggle
of existence must needs make use of them for food, _a pessimistic_ or
_cruel view of Nature’s ways appears illogical_.
Sympathy is the foundation stone on which the moral sense has been
erected, and the fount of sympathy would seem to have arisen with
the commencement of conjugal ties and filial affections. The young,
on being tended to by their parents, would naturally, i.e. by a
process of natural selection, derive pleasure from the benefits thus
conferred on them in the society of their parents, as would one parent
[Sidenote: _Dawn of the Social Instinct_]
in the society of its mate. Thus the social instinct would spring
into existence, and in cases of several families benefited by close
association, not only one but many generations might become sociable
and keep together. Tribal communities would thus be formed, in which
the social instinct would become strongly rooted. And here I believe
I am right in saying that, if it were possible to make a statistical
survey of the whole animal kingdom, the majority of creatures would
be found living in societies, though these varied from small groups
to immense colonies. And, without elaborating further on the subject
of sociability which would take us too far afield in the present
treatise, we can readily see that sympathy among the members of
the flock would of necessity follow. If sympathy even in its most
restricted and elemental form, did not arise, then in the struggle
for existence the factors which conserve or make for the general
good of the community would cease to act and finally disappear _in
toto_. And sympathy when evolved would manifest its moral code in
[Sidenote: _Filial affection the tap-root of the social instinct_]
many actions. And now, before considering the moral sense of Man as
he appears at this stage, i.e. a tribal sociable animal, I may point
out that while I hold to the idea that filial affection appears to
be the tap-root of the social instinct, it may happen that natural
selection has ordained in a few cases for the good of their special
community that this filial affection should be of short duration,
and indeed in still more special cases be replaced by animosity. As
illustrating these points I may mention birds of prey which in the
wild state drive away their offspring from their hunting-grounds
at a tender age, while working-bees kill their brother-drones, and
[Sidenote: _The ethics of the energetic members in Insect communities
and fate of the Indolent_]
queen-bees their daughter-queens. Even here in the case of the bees it
is quite obvious that the destruction of the drones by the workers is
far from being an act devoid of moral sense. For, if the experiment
of putting a drone and a working-bee in a roomy glass box (or under
a tumbler as I have often done), be tried, it will be seen that the
working-bee (provided with her fatal weapon of offence, the sting)
does not at once set herself out to sting the drone to death. On the
contrary, both bees become occupied in trying to escape, and, unless
numbers are imprisoned together, the stinging-bees will not hurt the
drones; but, when the room becomes suffocatingly small, then not only
are the drones attacked but the workers attack each other. But at the
hive things are different. The sole office of the drone is that of
fertilizing the queen; before and after this is accomplished he leads
an indolent life, being pushed out of the way by active energetic
creatures and devoured in great numbers by spiders and other predatory
arthropods. Thus, when not engaged in fertilizing the queen, should he
remain close by the hive and thereby interrupt the working community
he, regarded as a useless ‘loafer,’ is naturally disposed of in the
best way possible, viz. by extinction. Indeed, from the excellence of
the results obtained by the government here adopted, in which only
those who work are permitted to survive, it is suggestive that we
might adopt less lenient measures than we are wont to do when human
‘loafers’ come about, and, determined not to work, persist in acting as
obstructionists to the energetic community.
But now let us inquire into the moral character of man assuming him
to have become a sociable animal. Sympathy in its various aspects
should guide him in his line of conduct, yet how can we recognize
[Sidenote: _Analysis of atrocious deeds of savages_]
this important moral sense with the revolting cruelties which the
records of his rude and barbarous age darken? Nevertheless, we are
often too hasty in condemning the cannibals, the scalp-hunters, or the
Dyak head-hunters, the last-mentioned being not satisfied unless they
preserve and dry their gruesome trophies. Many other revolting savage
customs might be cited, enough to make us wonder if the moral sense
of the social savage is even on a level with that of the dog. However,
we must not lose sight of the fact that the moral code is instinctive
only to the members of a given tribe, so that such sociable actions
as concerted movement in attack, mutual aid in defence, and so on,
do not extend to all the individuals even of a small insular nation.
Consequently, while there is a hopeless clash of morality when two or
more tribes collide, still it is manifest that _human savagery must
be intermittent, very irregular_, and――_most important of all――quite
unexpected_, so that here also except when actually engaged in the
affray, Man in his most abject state did not constantly contemplate on
and live in dread of hostile conditions. Even among the best organized
communities of the lower animals tribal wars break out, as inevitably
as thunder-storms and hurricanes burst upon our planet. In such feuds
the weaker members perish, and the wounded are often set upon, torn to
pieces, and devoured by their adversaries. Similarly in the case of
Man; nor can we do justice to his gradual evolution, by natural means,
[Sidenote: _Cannibalism and religious rites_]
and at the same time look upon cannibalism, scalping, or head-hunting
as indiscriminate butcheries, _but rather as occasional disasters which
necessarily follow tribal feuds_. Indeed, cannibalism has to a large
extent been associated with religious rites, _the victim often laying
down his life voluntarily for motives conceived as highly advantageous
to the tribe_; sometimes he was deified after death, and the eating
of the slain god finds its parallel, as a rite in several religious
systems. These acts of atonement by the shedding of human blood, which
have chronicled the past ages of Man’s history, were, with the active
growth of his Imagination in which Fear became the ever dominant
factor, a necessary phase in his evolution toward that higher state
known as civilization, in which we behold an expansion and elevation of
his moral code.
[Sidenote: _Man in historic times_]
I need only make a passing reference to Man as he appears in historic
times. The ancient civilizations point to great antiquity, and, judging
from their elaborated systems of religions and morals, they must have
taken an immensity of time to reach the era of civilization. These
great Empires, Egypt, Babylon, Rome, Greece, and others, have grown
up, flourished, sunk, and died, leaving as a legacy to us permanent
written records of their peoples and their moral code. The cults of
the Orientals, speaking in a very general way, were evolved to a large
extent out of solar myths, based on the daily rising and setting of the
sun, its yearly course through the seasons, and the signs of the zodiac.
[Sidenote: _Solar mythology and its present-day survivals_]
It is not possible here to enter into a study of comparative religions
of civilised peoples, but it may be remarked that many legends and
dogmas of such vital importance in the eyes of sectarian religionists,
such as _the Creation and Fall of Man_, _Universal Deluge_, _the
Resurrection of the Body_, _the Virgin Birth of an Incarnate Deity in
human form_, and several others, appear to have had their conception of
origin in Astronomical and mainly in Solar Mythology. And now, passing
through the Dark Ages which succeeded the fall of the latest great
Empire, namely Rome, and bearing in mind that the pendulum had to swing
back as an era of savage bigotry was entered upon, we at length arrive
at the present age. Here, then, let us conclude by taking a glance
at the moral codes which are associated with Man in that stage of
evolution in which he now presents himself to us.
[Sidenote: _Man of present-day civilizations_]
We must bear in mind that throughout I have insisted on the moral
sense and the various beliefs which have sprung out of its imaginative
faculty as being _forces of evolution_, and that all these various
beliefs, when formulated into dogmas, can be linked together and
traced back to their common ancestor――_Crude Superstition_. Hence it
seems obvious that the Naturalist, from his point of view, would
[Sidenote: _The Superstitious and the Non-superstitious Man_]
conveniently classify all civilized communities, according to the
evolution of their moral sense, into two great Orders, namely: the
Superstitious, and the Non-superstitious. There may be some weak
connecting links between the two, but these cannot break down our
classification. Furthermore, it matters not whether we are considering
Western or Eastern civilizations, or even if we were to include
the Ancient civilizations. What we are considering is the morality
of that class of Man which has evolved into the highest degree of
intellectuality, and into the civilized sphere into which we think he
has arrived, though at the same time it remains hard to comprehend what
civilization really is and how it can be defined.
[Sidenote: _First principles of the Superstitious Man_]
To return to our classification: and firstly with regard to the
Superstitious Order. By far the greater number of persons in the
world are here included. The existence of Super-nature inhabited by
Super-Natural Beings, which Beings can act at variance with or even
rupture the fixed Laws of Nature is the first principle or essence
of their Imaginative Faculty. These Beings may exist plurally,
pseudo-plurally (e.g. the Deities of the Christian Trinity), or more
rarely only in the singular number (Unitarianism). The intensity of
the Imaginative Faculty allows of a conception of Anthropomorphism,
that is to say, of Beings possessed of humanly-conceived form and
attributes. Fearful in their superstitious conceptions the people of
[Sidenote: _Anthropomorphism and the standardization of an ethical
code_]
the superstitious order seek to standardize the conception of Right
and Wrong action, and this conception, of purely human origin, is
attributed by the leaders of the particular superstition to come from
the Super-Natural Being, _whom they mould in their own image_. But it
is the leaders or expounders of the cult who dictate authority, and,
acting as deputies to the Super-natural, try to over-stimulate the
Faculty of Imagination, until the mind becomes warped, and _the power
of faith, rather than the power of reasoning, takes the position of
paramount importance in morals_. But faith, unless strongly backed and
controlled by reason, is a shifting sand on which to erect a code of
morals. For, as the community of the cult enlarges, the struggle to
live by the standard of morality set up becomes increasingly difficult,
and what inevitably follows is that the faithful become imposed upon by
being asked to believe in further elaborations of the Super-natural’s
ordinances. This, which corresponds to the systematizing of creeds and
the expounding of certain mystical philosophies, can have only a tenure
of existence. For, even assuming the Superstition to be an increasingly
attractive and fashionable one, it will, as its community increases,
soon elaborate to such an extent that, at last unable to maintain its
standard of morality, it becomes split up into sections, which tend
to subdivide at a subsequent period. The conception of the Imagery
and its elaborations lose unity, and the feelings of the members
of the divided cults, now at variance, become heated, and later on
[Sidenote: _Evolution of Sectarianism in civilized superstitious cults_]
sufficiently frenzied to induce sectarian bitterness. These manifestos
of superstition go by the name of “religion,” but, when sectarianism
becomes rife and modern tribal wars, so to speak, are waged, it is
clear that true religious thought becomes dwarfed, and may disappear:
fortunately, however, only for a time, for evolution ever tends to
carry the moral sense upward. Thus, by a swing of the pendulum, a new
and simpler superstition, founded on less extravagant imagination
than its predecessor, springs out of the tail of one of the sectarian
offshoots, and may supplant it. The cycle is repeated and so the drama
[Sidenote: _Endurance of the Superstitious order_]
of the Superstitious Order of Man endures. His morals more or less
coincide with his beliefs. The simpler his faith, the simpler his code,
but at its best the moral sense, based upon superstition, is, from the
essence of its foundation, bound to be permeated with falsities and
absurdities. Fortunately, however, there is a moral sense implanted in
all of us, which has gradually evolved and has by a process of Natural
Selection made us heirs of those virtues which we display instinctively
for the good of the community. These we all possess, though in varying
degrees, but in the Superstitious man many of them become hampered from
developing to their full extent. For, if certain faculties of the moral
sense run riot and largely monopolize action of thought――and this is
what happens in the case of highly imaginative people――the moral sense
becomes lop-sided, and morality is viewed as through smoked glasses.
We may now ask Who is the Non-superstitious Man, and of what moral code
is he possessed? At present he is doubtless greatly in the minority,
but with the advance of scientific thought he appears to be increasing
in numbers daily. He hails from two sources. In either case he is
[Sidenote: _The Non-superstitious order of Man_]
fortified by the possession of a wholesome degree of scepticism and
of critical faculty, which enable him to inquire unbiassedly into the
origin of phenomena, and to accept or reject statements according
as his own reasoning faculty alone guides him. He fails to see
_‘Super-Nature’ outside Nature as known to him, and he stands aloof
from the dictates of external authority when it_ _asserts without
evidence_. It is obvious that one of the sources from whence he springs
is from a Superstitious Cult, out of which he emerges as a dissenter,
and to which it is exceedingly rare to find him returning. The other
source finds its example in the man whose parents already have belonged
to the Non-superstitious Order and who adopts the same. The position
of the Non-superstitious man is simple to follow. He neither asserts
nor denies questions concerning phenomena which lie outside the
range of experience; but, taking his moral stand altogether on the
[Sidenote: _Rules of Morality apart from conceptions of the
Supernatural_]
firm platform of evolutionary evidence, he recognizes that there are
fundamental rules of Morality apart from any Imaginative conceptions
of the Super-natural. He knows such fundamental rules are the outcome
of heredity and environment, and that with each successive generation
they become more and more so instinctively. Unfettered mentally by an
artificial code of morals of the sectarian religionist, his moral sense
naturally comes to the front, and he knows his motto to be:
“And because right is right, to follow right
Were wisdom in the scorn of consequence.”
FINIS
Transcriber’s Notes:
――Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).
――Punctuation and spelling inaccuracies were silently corrected.
――Archaic and variable spelling has been preserved.
――Variations in hyphenation and compound words have been preserved.