Genetics and Ethics 313 



highest organisms to inhibit instinctive and non-rational acts by 

 intellectual and rational stimuli and to regulate behavior in tin- 

 light of past experience. Such freedom is not uncaused activity, 

 but freedom from the mechanical responses to external or instinc- 

 tive stimuli, through the intervention of internal stimuli due to 

 experience and intelligence. To the person accustomed to think 

 of will and choice as absolutely free this may seem to be a sort of 

 freedom so limited as to be scarcely worth the having; and yet 

 "it is the dawning grace of a new dispensation," the beginnings 

 of rational life, social obligations, moral responsibility. 



The only control over natural phenomena which is possible is 

 in choosing between alternatives which are offered ; and the only 

 control which one who has reached the age of intelligence can 

 have over his own development consists in choosing between the 

 alternatives which are open to him. He may not choose his hered- 

 ity or early development for the alternative paths which were 

 once offered here have long since been passed; but to a limited 

 extent he may choose his present environment and training, he 

 may choose a path which leads to discipline and increased pow- 

 ers of self-control or the reverse, and to this extent only is he 

 responsible for what he may become. 



4. Responsibility and Will. — All organisms are capable of 

 responding to chemical and physical stimuli but in addition normal 

 men have the capacity of responding to stimuli of a higher order. 

 By responsibility in this higher sense I understand the ability on 

 the part of the organism to respond to rational, social and ethical 

 stimuli or impulses and to inhibit responses to stimuli of an op- 

 posite nature, and the corresponding expectation on the part of 

 others that the individual will so respond. The psychical stimuli 

 which influence our behavior are not merely remembered exper- 

 iences but the words, suggestions, admonitions, ideas which come 

 to us from others, as well as the almost endless permutations of 

 such memories and suggestions in our thoughts. The social and 

 ethical stimuli are not merely such as arise from love of reward 

 and fear of punishment or the desire for praise and the fear of 



