MORAL PROGRESS 469 



closest adaptation of conduct as a means to the end of securing the 

 greatest amount of enduring human happiness, is the goal. To this 

 end we must steer between lax standards which allow license, and rigid 

 standards which produce hypocrisy. We must avoid, on the one hand, 

 that extreme of rigid regulation which unintelligently crushes out all 

 variatioii and preserves only the spiritless, and, on the other hand, 

 avoid that total absence of social conduct which is anarchy. Now this 

 middle course is possible only when a majority of the people are moral 

 by nature. The reason for this is the fact that most people need the 

 constant pressure of custom to force them to lead thoroughly moral lives, 

 hence only the naturally moral person will lead the moral life in a 

 society of plastic standards. The problem of moral progress is therefore 

 twofold: first, of creating flexible standards which will allow variation 

 and adaptation to changing needs; second, of securing the preserva- 

 tion and perpetuation of a human stock that may be depended upon 

 to lead moral lives without the necessity of much social compulsion. 



In considering these problems, it should be noted that during the his- 

 torical period there appears to have been little, if any, improvement in 

 the innate mental constitution of man. While other animal species have 

 advanced because of improvement in the stock, man's progress has been 

 chiefly due to improvement in the content of Ms tradition, which, as 

 generations have come and gone, has been worked over, until, by the 

 gradual elimination of the superstitious, superfluous, irrational and 

 inconsistent elements, it has become more elastic and better adapted to 

 changing needs and interests. This progress can be well illustrated by 

 a comparison of the content of the mind of primitive man with that of 

 modern man. The tradition of many primitive groups is that disease 

 is an object which can be driven or frightened away from the body of the 

 sick person by proper charms, dances and alarming noises. After one 

 of these grotesque ceremonies, the medicine man exhibits a quartz crys- 

 tal which is supposed to represent the disease that he has taken from 

 the person in the course of making him well. Compare this with the 

 modern notion that disease is a disordered condition of the mind or 

 body, and that by rest, proper food, care, drugs, and exercise, the body 

 can be restored to a normal healthy condition. As a means to the end 

 of curing the sick, the primitive method is quite wide of the mark, 

 ridiculously crude as compared with the efficient methods of scientific 

 medicine — vaccination, anti-toxin, antisepsis and aseptic methods. The 

 difference between the two systems is simply that our modern methods 

 are the result of a longer experience, during which, in the course of ex- 

 periment, trial and failure, we have learned to eliminate many super- 

 fluous efforts and inconsistent practises. Thus the usages of civilized 

 man are more efficient instruments to certain ends than are the customs 

 of primitive men. 



