356 Heredity. 



knowledge previously acquired, a certain mental aptitude, a 

 special mental process, a certain professional or other aim 

 each of these secondary facts being itself highly complex the 

 moral element is, as it were, lost amid this great mass of elements, 

 which are integrated in one single fact 



Hence the element which we have called invariable constitutes 

 only a trifling part of our moral states and moral acts. The 

 variable element consists of that sum of ideas, judgments, ratio- 

 cinations, recollections, passions, sentiments, habits, views often 

 narrow and incomplete, prejudices and errors which vary from 

 century to century, between nation and nation, and between indi- 

 vidual and individual, according to the incessant evolution of 

 the human mind. 



By taking this point of view we see facts, apparently at total 

 variance one with another, fall under one and the same moral 

 formula, much as the ascent of balloons and the fall of bodies 

 come under the one law of gravitation. If I take in a deserted 

 child, if I care for and educate it, if I spare no pains to train it 

 to good habits, and if thus I succeed in making it an accom- 

 plished man, assuredly every one will say that my conduct is 

 worthy of praise. Now if in thought we go back two centuries, 

 and imagine ourselves in Madrid or Seville at the instant when 

 an auto-da-fe is about to take place, we see the court decked 

 as for a holiday; crowds throng the streets, and there is procession 

 of penitents and monks the cruel pomp is revolting. Yet these 

 two acts, unlike though they be, are reducible to one and the 

 same moral idea do good to others ; but in the former instance 

 this idea is applied only to true judgments, while in the latter case 

 it is tangled in a web of false notions, such as an hypothetical 

 belief accepted as certain, a right of coercion wrongfully exerted, 

 etc., which eventually annihilate the moral idea. 



It may be said that this is to assign a very small part to the 

 moral element properly so called. But the fact is that this in- 

 variable basis is necessarily very restricted, as we have shown. 

 What perfects it and what varies is the ideas and judgments 

 that come into association with it Hence we conclude that there 

 is a great deal of truth in the much disputed adage Omnis 

 pcccans cst ignorans. 



