96 Heredity, Variation and Genius 



it is the unthinking habit to say, one absolute con- 

 science, authoritative and infallible, there are many 

 and varying consciences. 



What is the fundamental principle of the build- 

 ing up of a social structure ? Mark well what 

 passions are fitted to promote or hinder the 

 common weal : foster, praise and flatter those 

 that conduce thereto ; check, blame and repress 

 those that are hurtful. By that rule the 

 special conscience has been gradually fashioned, 

 or at all events much helped to be fashioned ; 

 for it is most certain that laws and customs 

 work effectually to breed consciences. Custom- 

 consciences are notoriously many times more 

 potent in practice than an abstract moral con- 

 science, which is apt to be asleep when it should 

 be alert, or to doze in abstract serenity when it 

 should be active in concrete doing ; have indeed 

 in the past notably done more to actuate present 

 conduct than distant hopes of heaven or fears of 

 hell, even when such hopes and fears possessed 

 a reality which they have not now that the 

 theological dogmas concerning them are being 

 quietly relegated to the museum of obsolete 

 religious beliefs. 



The many obsolete myths, fables, symbols, 

 superstitions, rites and ceremonies which have 

 come and gone in the long travail of man through 

 the ages, many of them so grossly irrational and 

 cruelly oppressive as infinitely to amaze how men 

 ever invented them, and perhaps still more how 



