The Mechanistic Conception of Life 31 



ix. ethics 



If our existence is based on the play of blind forces and only 

 a matter of chance; if we ourselves are only chemical mechan- 

 isms — how can there be an ethics for us? The answer is, 

 that our instincts are the root of our ethics and that the instincts 

 are just as hereditary as is the form of our body. We eat, 

 drink, and reproduce not because mankind has reached an 

 agreement that this is desirable, but because, machine-like, 

 we are compelled to do so. We are active, because we are com- 

 pelled to be so by processes in our central nervous system; 

 and as long as human beings are not economic slaves the instinct 

 of successful work or of workmanship determines the direction 

 of their action. The mother loves and cares for her children, 

 not because metaphysicians had the idea that this was desirable, 

 but because the instinct of taking care of the young is inherited 

 just as distinctly as the morphological characters of the female 

 body. We seek and enjoy the fellowship of human beings 

 because hereditary conditions compel us to do so. We struggle 

 for justice and truth since we are instinctively compelled to see 

 our fellow beings happy. Economic, social, and political con- 

 ditions or ignorance and superstition may warp and inhibit 

 the inherited instincts and thus create a civilization with a 

 faulty or low development of ethics. Individual mutants may 

 arise in which one or the other desirable instinct is lost, just as 

 individual mutants without pigment may arise in animals; and 

 the offspring of such mutants may, if numerous enough, lower 

 the ethical status of a community. Not only is the mechanistic 

 conception of life compatible \vith ethics : it seems the only con- 

 ception of life which can lead to an understanding of the source 

 of ethics. 



