CHAPTER XXIII 



MORALS AS A FACTOR IN ORGANIC EVOLUTION 

 AND THEIR BIOLOGICAL ORIGIN 



"Individual rights," "good of the greatest number," "con- 

 science," and "morals" are a few of numerous related terms 

 that have been extensively used in the literature of the past 

 half century in particular. These have been so variously 

 used and connoted that the need for a continuous treatment 

 of the origin of morals has been fully felt and has been ably 

 met by Spencer, Huxley, Haeckel, Sutherland (202), and 

 Westermarck (203). 



But, in any inquiry into the field of morals, one is at once 

 confronted by a condition of affairs that has greatly com- 

 plicated the study in the past, and even now exists to a con- 

 siderable degree. We refer to the constant tendency that 

 has existed, alike in Europe and Asia, during the past 7000 

 years at least, on the part of a priestly or clerical class, to 

 place morals under the special patronage and sanction of the 

 temple or church, and to guide or modify the moral code as 

 suited the circumstances of the case, or of each religion con- 

 cerned. 



As Draper (209), White (210), and others have shown, this 

 absorptive tendency on the part of witches, magicians, medi- 

 cine men, astrologers, priests, and clerics has caused the entire 

 study of morals to be intertwined with other problems, in a 

 manner and to a degree that a scientific consideration of morals 

 and morality was long impossible. Morality, religion, divine 

 revelation, and human immortality were intertwined, and were 

 often viewed as of like origin. Frazer also (20J^: 44) has fully 

 shown that this is true over many and widely separate regions. 



But in recent decades the most brilliant demonstration of 

 the confused and conflicting views that are held regarding 



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