CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE WILL 93 



in excessive egotism and sensuality. The world is 

 not very intelligent in its way of looking at these 

 outbreaks. There have gradually emerged conven- 

 tional standards of behavior which leave much to be 

 desired in regard to ideas of what is good and what 

 is bad. These grossly imperfect and inconsistent 

 standards are due to a delay or failure in appreciat- 

 ing the biological causes of conduct. Conduct is 

 the expression through the muscular system of de- 

 sires, feelings, and emotions which are functions of 

 the nervous system. The human nervous system, 

 notwithstanding its great complexity, must be 

 regarded as exemplifying the same forces and laws 

 of nature as less complex and less highly organized 

 aggregations of matter. But we cannot attribute 

 to nature either goodness or badness. Nature is 

 neither good nor bad, neither right nor wrong, 

 neither kind nor cruel. She is simply consistent. 

 Yet the consistency of nature is not always simple 

 and obvious, for the reason that her happenings are 

 often the result of conflicting forces. When we 

 speak of human conduct as good or bad, right or 

 wrong, kind or cruel, we simply mean that larger 

 or smaller groups of human beings in the course of 

 their culture have come to designate or describe va- 

 rious acts, of which they approve or disapprove, by 

 means of these terms, associating them sometimes 

 with rather well-defined conceptions, at other times 

 with more vague ideas. These conventional con- 

 ceptions, reflecting as they do the composite yet 



