286 DOCTRINE OF EVOLUTION 



action, long before the child can grasp the higher con- 

 ceptions of ethics. If a human being i;iever learns to do 

 so, and becomes a criminal through force of heredity or 

 circumstances, the machinery of the law automatically 

 comes into operation to conserve the welfare of the com- 

 munity. Such a criminal may be unable to control his 

 destiny, and may not be responsible for being what he is, 

 but nevertheless he must pay the penalty for his un- 

 social heritage by suffering elimination. 



Ethical systems are built around man's vague recog- 

 nition of certain natural obligations, and they have thus 

 become more or less complex, and more or less varied as 

 worked out by different peoples. They must necessa- 

 rily be much concerned with social questions, with 

 morals in the usual sense and the more rigid principles 

 enacted into the spoken and printed law, but they have 

 also become closely connected with religion and theo- 

 logical elements. Especially is this true in the ethics of 

 barbarous and savage peoples, who accredit the '^cate- 

 gorical imperative" to some supernatural power, as we 

 are to see in a later section. The one point that comes 

 out clearly is that the systems of conduct and duties 

 have evolved so as to be very different among various 

 races, and that in the history of any one people, ethics 

 has passed through many varied conditions. What 

 may be deemed right at one period becomes wrong at 

 another when conditions may be changed ; in medieval 

 England the penalty of death was prescribed for one who 

 killed a king's deer, as well as for a highway murderer. 

 The Fijian of a quarter century ago killed his parents 

 when they became too old to be effective members of 

 their tribe. And so deeply ingrained was this principle 



