M O R A L I T Y 



Kant's categorical imperative is a mere dogma, and, like 

 his whole theory of practical reason, rests on dogmatic 

 and not critical grounds. It is a fiction of faith, and 

 directly opposed to the empirical principles of pure 

 reason. 



The notion of duty, which the categorical nnpcrativc 

 represents as a vague a priori law implanted in the 

 human mind — a kind of moral instinct — can, as a matter 

 of fact, be traced to a long series of phyletic modifications 

 of the phronema of the cortex. Duty is a social sense 

 that has been evolved a posteriori as a result of the com- 

 plicated relations of the egoism of individuals and the 

 altruism of the community. The sense of duty, or 

 conscience, is the amenability of the will to the feeling 

 of obligation, which varies very considerably in in- 

 dividuals. 



A scientific study of the moral law, on the basis of 

 physiology, evolution, ethnography, and history, teaches 

 us that its precepts rest on biological grounds, and have 

 been developed in a natural way. The whole of our 

 modern morality and social and juridical order have 

 evolved in the course of the nineteenth century out of 

 the earlier and lower conditions which we now generally 

 regard as things of the past. The social morality of the 

 eighteenth century proceeded, in its turn, from that of 

 the seventeenth and sixteenth centuries, and still further 

 from that of the Middle Ages, with its despotism, fanat- 

 icism, Inquisition, and witch trials. It is equally clear 

 from modern ethnography and the comparative psychol- 

 ogy of races that the morality of barbarous races has 

 been evolved gradually from the lower social rules of 

 savage tribes, and that these differ only in degree, not 

 in kind, from the instincts of the apes and other social 

 vertebrates. The comparative psychology of the verte- 

 brates shows, further, that the social instincts of the 

 mammals and birds have arisen from the lower stages of 



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