IN HIGHER PEOPLES 129 



edge and wealth have accumulated enormously. 

 Monogamy and more or less settled family rela- 

 tions have displaced the promiscuity of the savage 

 and the animal. And, most important of all, the 

 Golden Rule as a moral standard and ideal has 

 taken the place of the savage standard of Might. 



Hence the higher races have in their nature 

 many instincts and ways of acting that are no 

 longer useful to them. These instincts are sur- 

 vivals from our savage ancestors. They survive 

 for the same reason that horns survive in domes- 

 ticated cattle, and eyes in cave fishes, and ear 

 muscles in men. They have gone out of use, but 

 not long enough for them to have gone out of ex- 

 istence. 



The vestigial instincts which survive in the na- 

 ture of higher peoples from their savage ances- 

 tors are one of the chief causes of the immorality 

 of higher peoples. You have heard of "original 

 sin." What we call "original sin" is merely the 

 name we give to the wrong-going caused by the 

 vestigial instincts of our nature. "VVe go wrong 

 because we are driven in wrong ways by the left- 

 over instincts of our ancestors. It has been said 

 that the human heart is the gladiatorial arena of 

 gods and beasts — the gods representing those 

 higher, better, and more civilized, but newer, in- 

 stincts of our nature, and the beasts representing 

 those lower, older, and more animal-like impulses 

 which tend ever to drag us down. It is of the ut- 

 most importance that these things should be un- 



