78 



The Journal of Heredity 



customs, which have been held up as 

 the pattern for the conduct of the 

 individual. In many primitive com- 

 munities these are almost inexorable- 

 and even yet, in the highest civiliza- 

 tion of the present day, they are per- 

 haps more important than any other 

 one factor, in the code of morality. 



S Revelation. These customs were 

 in almost all societies backed up re- 

 inforced, and supplemented by revela- 

 tion of a supposed divine standard of 

 conduct, handed down from above by 

 some superhuman power. Such reve- 

 lation, whether it be the Ten Com- 

 mandments, the Koran, or the sacred 

 writings of any other people, has for 

 long periods been accepted as an un- 

 questionable rule for guidance, and is 

 to a large extent so accepted at the 

 present day. The authority of revela- 

 tion is rapidly breaking down, how- 

 ever, for reasons that need not here be 

 rehearsed : moreover, most of the extant 

 revelations are of some antiquity, and 

 not always easy of application to 

 modern problems. 



THE CONSCIENTIOUS MAN 



4. Conscience is relied upon by many 

 as a supplement to or replacement of 

 the preceding factors. Of all injunc- 

 tions for the guidance of conduct, the 

 exhortation to "obey the dictates of 

 your own conscience" is perhaps the 

 worst; for 'conscience" is often but a 

 vague and mystical name for the col- 

 lection of prejudices and unrecognized 

 complexes that exist in the human mind 

 and action upon it is no safe basis for 

 successful adjustment. Frequently the 

 conscientious ideas are the results of 

 mternal. mental conflicts: they are 

 merely expressions of the individual's 

 more or less unsuccessful attempt to 

 solve some of his pressing problems. 

 VoT il ustration, I take the case of the 

 so-called conscientious objectors in the 

 Great War^ I am not ' referring to 

 those who had a "streak of yellow " 

 and grasped at any straw to evade 



military service; nor to those who 

 honestly believed— for reasons un- 

 acceptable to their fellow-citizens— 

 that the United States was on the 

 wrong side of the conflict. I am speak- 

 ing ot the genuine pacifist, who felt 

 willing to suffer any indignitv rather 

 than to take up arms and shed the 

 blood of his fellow-men. For the 

 present purpose, it makes no dif- 

 terence whether these men were ethi- 

 cally right or wrong: I am merely 

 describing the mechanism of belief 

 Ihese martyrs— at least, those of 

 them who were sent to the peni- 

 tentiary—were found by mental test 

 to be far above the average in in- 

 telligence.2 What did their conscience 

 on this point amount to^ Differ- 

 ent things in different cases, of course- 

 but in many instances it showed 

 nothing more than that its expo- 

 nent had had domestic infelicities 

 —or, to put it more crudelv, a nag- 

 gmg wife. The mind unconsciously 

 set up a defense against an unbearable 

 domestic situation, in a strong feeling 

 ot the wrongfulness of conflict of any 

 kind, and a strong demand for peace at 

 any price. A man who, because he has 

 been henpecked, develops beliefs that 

 make him willing to go to the peniten- 

 tiary rather than to share in the glory 

 conferred by popular excitement on the 

 participants in a "war to end war " is a 

 proper subject for sympathetic and 

 scientific understanding; but it is 

 quite out of the question for his fellow- 

 citizens to venerate his emotional atti- 

 tude as a form of superior and divinelv- 

 inspired guidance in the most impor- 

 tant affairs of life. Conscience, which 

 might in many cases be more correctly 

 termed "unconscience," is not a de- 

 pendable counselor. 



THE APPLICATION OF INTELLIGENCE 



5 Analysis. The last type of stand- 

 ard tor conduct, or basis for moralitv 

 to which I shall refer, is analysis based 

 °" i^" /"^^'''gent appreciation of the 

 probable consequences of an act. 





