282 DOCTRINE OF EVOLUTION 



a search for the reasons why men should do certain 

 things and refrain from committing other acts. Like 

 psychology and sociology, ethics began as a strictly 

 formal and a priori system of dogmas which related to 

 the life of cultured human beings alone. Again, like 

 the sciences specified, it gradually broadened its scope 

 so as to include the conventions of races lower in the 

 scale than the civilized peoples who only were sufficiently 

 advanced intellectually to conceive it. Thus the com- 

 parative method came to be employed, and in direct 

 proportion to its use, more liberal views have developed 

 regarding the diverse methods of thought and standards 

 of social life and of conduct among differently condi- 

 tioned peoples. Still more important is the demonstra- 

 tion that human ethics as a whole, like human faculty 

 and civilization, takes its place at the end of a scale 

 whose beginnings can be found in lower organic nature. 

 Those who have followed the account of social evo- 

 lution given in the preceding chapter must realize that 

 the basic general principles of natural ethics, as con- 

 trasted with ^^ formal" ethics, have already been dis- 

 covered and formulated. A biological association of 

 whatever grade and degree of complexity is impossible 

 unless biological duties are discharged. Human ethical 

 conduct differs from insect and protozoon ethical con- 

 duct only in the element of a participation in the pro- 

 cess by the explicit consciousness of man that he has 

 definite obligations to others; and this distinguishing 

 characteristic is the direct outcome of an evolution 

 which adds reflection and conceptual thought to a men- 

 tal framework derived from prehuman ancestors. The 

 insect hurries about in its daily life as an animated 



