CHAP, x " SCIENCE OF ETHICS " III 



environment has done its work ; but these (or so I 

 understand Mr. Stephen) are insignificant in com- 

 parison with the broad fact that every child or man 

 is a human being, homo sapiens, and therefore a 

 moral being ; that each child or man is merged in 

 the community where he has grown up and takes 

 on its colour. Now one is fully prepared to agree 

 with the positions here laid down. A man's a man 

 for a' that ; there is a vast moral unity in the human 

 race. But Mr. Stephen's mode of stating his posi- 

 tion seems highly dubious. Anthropologically or 

 physiologically, man may be simply man, neither 

 more nor less ; but we were speaking of sociology, 

 were we not? If the social organism is changed, 

 are not the constituent individuals changed, socio- 

 logically? Strange metaphysical subtlety of em- 

 piricists, if this is to be denied! To remind us 

 that the members of society are physiologically un- 

 changed is beyond the mark. To point out that civi- 

 lised citizens would have been savages, if reared 

 among savages, is again beside the mark. The ques- 

 tion is not what they might have been, but what they 

 are. Mr. Stephen may settle it with other authorities 

 whether or not it is true that the "innate faculties 

 of a modern European differ little from those of the 

 savages who roamed the woods in prehistoric days." 1 

 Be that as it may, the educated faculties of a 

 modern European differ greatly from those of a con- 

 temporary or prehistoric savage after his fullest 

 savage training. Else the two societies could not 

 differ. Mr. Stephen thinks he is offering us a 

 contrast between the individual human organism 



1 p. 102. 



