98 APHORISMS AND REFLECTIONS 



or disapprobation. It becomes impossible to imagine 

 some acts without disapprobation, or others without 

 approbation of the actor, whether he be one's self 

 or anyone else. We come to think in the acquired 

 dialect of morals. An artificial personality, the 

 "man within," as Adam Smith calls conscience, 

 is built up beside the natural personality. He is the 

 watchman of society, charged to restrain the anti- 

 social tendencies of the natural man within the 

 limits required by social welfare. 



I have termed this evolution of the feelings out 

 of which the primitive bonds of human society are 

 so largely forged, into the organized and personified 

 sympathy we call conscience, the ethical process. 

 So far as it tends to make any human society more 

 efficient in the struggle for existence with the state 

 of nature, or with other societies, it works in har- 

 monious contrast with the cosmic process. But 

 it is none the less true that, since law and morals 

 are restraints upon the struggle for existence between 

 men in society, the ethical process is in opposition 

 to the principle of the cosmic process, and tends 

 to the suppression of the qualities best fitted for 

 success in that struggle. 



Moralists of all ages and of all faiths, attending 

 only to the relations of men towards one another 

 in an ideal society, have agreed upon the " golden 

 rule," "Do as you would be done by." In other 



