SCIENCE AND MORALITY 285 



conduct have some other source than theology or religion, then religious 

 instruction would not be the remedy sought. Indeed, it is possible that 

 those springs of virtue may be choked and their flow retarded by theo- 

 logical tenets, and the remedy proposed would not only not be beneficial 

 but actually detrimental. 



To clear the ground for a discussion of the causes of morality it is 

 first necessary to agree on what moral conduct is. If virtue no longer 

 consists in obeying a set of arbitrary statutes given to man by an 

 omniscient being, what criterion shall be used in judging conduct? 

 What makes lying, murder, adultery, covetousness, immoral, since that 

 they are immoral we all feel instinctively? How can we tell good 

 from bad conduct? The answer is obvious from the results which 

 follow such conduct. All immoral acts result in communal unhappi- 

 ness; all moral acts in communal happiness. The ten commandments 

 really constitute the " common law " of morality ; for, although they 

 have been given the form of mandatory statutes, they actually represent 

 those fundamental principles of conduct which humanity has found by 

 experience to be necessary to human happiness. Humanity should, 

 and does, modify and add to these basic principles as long experience 

 shows to be desirable. We can use this criterion for distinguishing 

 good from bad conduct and say that all acts which cause general 

 unhappiness, or permanently diminish human happiness, are immoral; 

 and all acts which increase it are moral. This criterion enables us to 

 understand why different standards of morality exist among different 

 peoples, since the immorality of any act is not generally acknowledged 

 until the misery which comes from it is generally perceived. 



Since moral conduct conduces to general comfort and immoral 

 conduct to discomfort, one factor in the improvement of morals is 

 obvious, for that the general happiness is influenced by the acts of 

 individuals is perceived by all. Humanity has been driven by its own 

 unhappiness to adopt a code of actions which produces a minimum of 

 unhappiness. In other words, it has been driven away from immoral 

 and toward moral conduct. This, however, is not the whole, and 

 possibly not the most important, cause of individual morality. Such 

 an altruistic basis of morality would probably not be a sufficiently 

 powerful incentive to good conduct in each of us, were it not reinforced 

 by another factor. The selfishness of the majority of men is so great 

 that the unhappiness of others, produced by their acts, would have little 

 effect in modifying their conduct, provided their own happiness was 

 secured, were it not for that other factor. 



There is in each one of us a fundamental instinct which actually 

 makes the happiness of others the most powerful of all incentives to 

 morality. Man is endowed by nature with a feeling of love for his 

 fellow men, which makes it impossible for him to be happy and at 



