668 Causes and Course of Organic Evolution 



As suggested then in the last paragraph, every truly moral 

 act is a social synthetic one, in which the constructive, the 

 integrating, the helpful course, for the general social organism, 

 rises superior to others that might tend to disintegrate, and the 

 action of the inhibitory nerves is of highest value in the process. 



It seems then a necessary conclusion to accept that in the 

 evolution of all social animal groups, and specially of man, 

 wherever such organisms come into more and more intimate 

 contact with varied environment — as set forth in Chapter XIX 

 — and at the same time evolve an ever-expanding social sys- 

 tem, in like ratio do combined mental resultants in each social 

 system give rise to ever higher proenvironal stimuli, that mani- 

 fest themselves in acts which are in the most exact sense moral. 



When we look more minutely into what might be called 

 the mechanics of the process, we see that very slowly a more 

 and more complex brain system is integrated in the anterior 

 frontal region, from the receding type of the Neanderthal 

 man to that of the rude savage, from such to that of the early 

 lake-dwellers, again to the Iranian and Aryan types upward 

 to superman of today. Such a brain system advances step 

 by step, as a material substance, alongside increasingly com- 

 plex mental stimuli from without, that act on and stimulate 

 the cogitic or brain substance on every side. Gradually the 

 combined mental impressions of individual and of family value 

 become, by constant brain-selection, comparison, combina- 

 tion, and resultant proenvironal effort, summated into acts 

 for social betterment, that — in human language — pass from 

 the mental to the mento-moral and the moral. 



But all evidence goes to show that most moral acts are in 

 no sense hereditary, though the machinery for the evolution 

 of them becomes steadily more perfect. In other words every 

 moral act starts as a resultant stimulation-response from sev- 

 eral simpler cognitic or cogitic stimuli. The more frequently 

 such separate stimuli course along the chromatin and neuratin 

 or cognito-cogitic substances and stimulate these to high and 

 yet higher molecular combinations, the more complex and 

 elevated become the moral acts themselves, since they are 



