The first of these--education--has to do with "environment"; the second
is part of heredity. One we get from our fellow-men, the other from our
ancestors.
Here let us pause to look into that much-preached-of "mystery" of the
"dual consciousness," or "double-self."
We all know that men often do things which they know to be wrong. When
we halt between the desire to do a thing, and the feeling that we ought
not to do it, we seem to have two minds within us, and these two minds
dispute about the decision.
What is this "mysterious" double-self? It is nothing but the contest
between heredity and environment; and is not mysterious at all.
Heredity is very old. It reaches back, to the beasts. It passes on
to us, generation after generation, for millions of years, certain
instincts, impulses, or desires of the beast.
Environment is new. It begins at the cradle. It prints upon us certain
lessons of right and wrong. It tells us that we ought not to do certain
things.
But the desire to do those things is part of our heredity. It is in our
blood. It is persistent, turbulent, powerful. It rises up suddenly, with
a glare and a snarl, like a wild beast in its lair. And at the sound of
its roar, and the flame of its lambent eyes, and the feel of its fiery
breath, memory lifts its voice and hand, and repeats the well-learned
lesson with its "shall-nots."
We are told that the animal impulses dwell in the "hind brain," and that
morals and thought dwell in the "fore brain." The "dual personality,"
then, the "double-self," consists of the two halves of the brain; and
the dispute between passion and reason, or between desire and morality,
is a conflict between the lower man and the higher; between the old Adam
and the new.
But it is also, to a great extent, a conflict between the average man
and the hero, or leader.
We inherit the roots of morality, that is ta say, the "social
instincts," or impulses of unselfish thoughts for others, from the
sociable animals. But what we call "ethics," the rules or laws of moral
conduct, have been slowly built up by human teachers. These teachers
have been men with a special genius for morals. They have made codes of
morals higher than the nature of the average man can reach.
But the average man has been taught these codes of morals in his
childhood, and has grown up in unquestioning respect for them.
So when his baser nature prompts him to an act, and his memory repeats
the moral lesson it has learnt, we have the nature of the average man
confronted by the teaching of the superior or more highly moral man.
And there is naturally a conflict between the desire to do evil, and
the knowledge of what things are good. It is not easy for Wat Tyler,
Corporal Trim, or Sir John Falstaff to follow the moral lines laid down
by such men as Buddha, Seneca, or Socrates. Sir John knows the value of
temperance; but he has a potent love of sack. Wat knows that it is
good for a man to govern his temper; but he is a choleric subject,
and "hefty" with a hammer. There was a lot of human nature in the
shipwright, who being reminded that St. Paul said a man was better
single, retorted that "St. Paul wasn't a North Shields man."