660 Causes and Course of Organic Evolution 



become infective for the lower animals is clearly shown by 

 the many moral acts of bees, beavers, crows, ants, and apes, 

 that man has never domesticated. 



Equally true is it that morals are only evolved and become 

 active factors under a social system. This social system may 

 include family members alone, or inhabitants of a common 

 nest as with ants, or those of several adjoining nests derived 

 from a common parentage, or between tribes and nations 

 as in the case of man. Thus it is one of the strongest proofs 

 of moral as of social advance, that Switzerland, the United 

 States, and some other countries to a less degree, are made 

 up of diverse nationalities, in the widest sense of the word, 

 and yet all of these live together under common moral re- 

 straints. So advancing mentality and advancing morality 

 are usually though not necessarily conjoined. 



But, having made a short survey of the moral field as hith- 

 erto regarded by many, it may conduce to a more exact esti- 

 mate of the content of it in relation to individual mental acts 

 on the one hand, and to religious acts on the other and higher, 

 if we define "morals." Such a definition would be: "The 

 gradually elaborated system of cogitic principles, established 

 and enacted conjointly by the individuals of a social organi- 

 zation, for promoting its satisfied social equilibrium, or its 

 socially satisfying progress." 



In his analysis of the origins and evolution of moral action 

 Sutherland {202) considers that sympathy is the fundamental 

 principle involved. But the highly complicated attitude that 

 we call sympathy represents in nearly every case a resultant 

 of several satisfied responses to stimuli, established environ- 

 ally between two or more organisms of the same or of other 

 groups. Thus the sympathy between husband and wife, 

 between parent and child, between master and dog, or between 

 two ants of the same nest, all represent several satisfied re- 

 sponse states, that have cumulated into a resultant response 

 which we may call the sympathetic attitude. But these 

 satisfied states are themselves usually the resultants of oft- 

 repeated stimuli of varied kind, which have each produced 

 a satisfied resj^onse between the two organisms involved. 



