THE EVOLUTION OF THE MORAL SENSE 123 



ity. So far as a failure to develop conscience is due 

 to a lack of these feelings, each generation is at the 

 mercy of the inexorable laws of heredity, which are 

 so persistently forced upon our attention by the 

 eugenists of to-day. Data which have been col- 

 lected in recent years show beyond much doubt that 

 some people and some families are largely lacking 

 in these innate inherited instincts, and thus that a 

 defective moral nature in many instances may be 

 traced to organic heredity. 



But from the conclusions of our analysis these 

 innate impulses do not constitute the whole of the 

 moral sense, and they do not in any degree consti- 

 tute what we call moral codes. The latter consist 

 really of a complicated and marvelous structure, 

 most valuable to the human race, which has been 

 reared upon the fundamental feelings above men- 

 tioned, by the action of society on the individual. 

 To a considerable extent also the moral sense itself 

 seems to have been the result of the action of the 

 environment upon the growing mind of the child, 

 for it is perfectly clear that the idea of right and 

 wrong is instilled in every individual partly by edu- 

 cation. Whether or not this is true of the moral sense, 

 it certainly is true of moral codes. Just as language 

 is an artificial structure erected upon a substratum 

 of physical and mental powers, so conscience, at least j 

 as concerns its application, is an artificial structure, 

 built upon a substratum of innate feelings. Just as 

 the moral codes are the result of the society in 

 which any group of men is living, so the moral sense 

 itself is in the same way, to a certain extent at least, 

 the result of the training which the child receives in 

 habits of obedience, together with his distinctly 



