Morals as a Factor in Organic Evolution 667 



construction, internal economy, and relation of the builders 

 to each other, and to their environment. 



But in the above great national struggle, as in all cogitic 

 acts, not only must we take account of afferent sensory im- 

 pressions or stimuli, and of efferent proenvironal motor im- 

 pulses; the inhibitory nerves and inhibitory impulses play 

 an important part. And the action or play of the latter come 

 up at every turn of the way in the eventful four years struggle. 

 Thus the collective mind of the North had at first to compare 

 and balance up the benefit derived, from the wealth of "down- 

 east" slave captains; from the relative cheapness of slave- 

 prepared raw cotton for the northern mills, in comparison 

 with importation of free-labor cotton; of the wealth received 

 by sale of the manufactured article; as well as other benefits. 



Against these had to be placed the constantly present pro- 

 environal picture of the untold cruelties and hardening effects 

 of a slaving voyage; the public sale of human beings; the de- 

 grading effects of forced labor; the utter inapplicability and 

 inadaptability of the Christian code of morals to the national 

 situation; the incapacity to reconcile and weld the more as- 

 piring and nobly proenvironing spirits like Channing, Garri- 

 son, Lincoln, Whittier, Beecher, and Beecher Stowe to the 

 existing conditions. 



The numerous complex and varied mental stimuli thus 

 constantly presented to the national mind, as fresh visual or 

 mental pictures were presented, had to be correlated, com- 

 pared, sorted out, and one of two or more possible proenvironal 

 pathways chosen. 



The loftier synthetic impulses prevailed in the nerve cells 

 of the national brain, so as to inhibit and minimize the more 

 degraded and analytic — even though financially paying — ten- 

 dencies. The grand resultant of all the synthetic and analytic 

 actions was a proenvironal moral pathway of human freedom, 

 that untold thousands of individuals had to die for, in order 

 to secure it for the living. But the pathway mapped out 

 then will never be returned on. It became also a moral beacon- 

 light for the world. 



