122 MORALS. 



intellectual nerve deal with complex figures for some 

 hours consecutively. When he goes home in the 

 evening he passes through one, it may be two, streets 

 of drink-shops ; in the third street his moral nerve, in 

 spite perhaps of much help from intellectual and emo- 

 tional nerve, is exhausted and he passes through the 

 tempting door. 



It is impossible to be too strenuous in obtaining true 

 views of morals in relation to the nervous organisation, 

 either of individuals or of races, in order to understand, 

 and interpret, and correct, individual or racial charac- 

 ter. Deeply interesting too are the questions touching 

 the origin and the growth and adjustability of morals 

 in all sentient life ; but their discussion would be out of 

 place here. A few brief, and perhaps not very sys- 

 tematic, remarks must bring this note to a close. 

 Closely and constantly bearing on the origin and 

 development of the moral faculty are the pleasures 

 which attend on doing right and the pains (always 

 more operative) which attend on wrong-doing. The 

 effects, to consciousness, of such benefits and penalties 

 are at first, near, instinctive, unformulated ; slowly 

 their power becomes more remote, wider in range, 

 reasoned out, formulated. Of all the faculties the 

 moral faculty is, and always must be, the first in im- 

 portance, the strongest, the clearest ; it is the most 

 essential to animal life. Psychologists frequently 

 speak of the pre-social stage : such stage never 

 existed. Men always, in and before their present 

 form, lived, even as apes live, in communities. Intel- 

 lectual capability, moral capability, and bodily capa- 

 bility, when normal, and under normal circumstances, 

 keep, not always abreast of each other, but never far 

 apart. All through the range of animal life, the 



