468 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



wliile others can invariably be counted upon to do the wrong thing. 

 Halfway between, most of us stand by in hesitation. These naturally 

 moral individuals who seem to have an innate sense of honor and propor- 

 tion are found in all walks of life. They appear to be types whose gen- 

 eral attractiveness and good sense are recognized by all classes with 

 whom they come in contact. i 



Thus moral conduct which is the result of repression of anti-social 

 impulse is but a negative social virtue. Moral conduct which is the 

 result of spontaneous action is a positive social virtue. The former is 

 analogous to the veneer which covers up the basic crudeness; the latter 

 is analogous to the solid rare wood. 



Historically considered, moral conduct seems to have been most 

 frequently of the psychological sort — very rarely of the biological sort. 

 Eigid customs and established usages have from time immemorial 

 sought to reduce variable human units in China and India, to spirit- 

 less followers of prescribed conduct. Each new generation is remorse- 

 lessly trained to mechanical practises, the following of which is thought 

 to signify moral conduct. Oriental peoples have proceeded farther than 

 Occidental peoples in the direction of rigidly standardizing conduct. 

 May not the adoption in recent times of some of the freer western stand- 

 ards by the supposedly tradition-bound east, be taken to signify the 

 superior practicability and greater value of plastic standards over 

 rigid ones? 



But moral conduct by compulsion is a social policy not exclusively 

 confined to Oriental peoples. We of the western world have had our ex- 

 perience with political and religious intolerance. Often the compul- 

 sory production of moral conduct has been carried to such extremes that 

 it has become more than a repressive force, it has become a selective 

 agency. Witness the case of the Eoman Catholic inquisition. By the 

 exaction of celibacy and by the torture and death of unorthodox 

 and original persons, the perpetuation of the most intelligent stock 

 was hindered. The enforcement of compulsory standards of moral con- 

 duct and the extermination of the intellectual, effectively rooted out of 

 society many of those people who had within them the possibilities of 

 genuine social conduct. In this way customs have been so rigidly pre- 

 served that it seems as if their chief object has been to crush without dis- 

 crimination all variation from the prescribed conduct. The ultra- 

 conservative elements of society seem to consider that the extension 

 of the sphere within which custom works to the line in ironing out all' 

 innovation and in rigidly standardizing conduct, is the best possible 

 evidence of moral progress. 



In recent times we have begun to think that genuine moral progress 

 consists in the loosening up and in the simplification of binding cus- 

 toms. That flexible state of tradition which is consistent with the 



