xvi SYSTEMATIC THOUGHT 389 



has grown up in correlation with the facts of individual 

 and social life, and this morality tends to be the effective 

 rule of conduct. On the other hand is a higher morality, 

 based on a conception, more or less perfect, of what life 

 means. This morality appeals too strongly to the con- 

 science or reason of mankind to be overtly rejected when 

 fairly presented, but it is not as yet strong enough to over- 

 come established practice when the two conflict. Hence 

 those u conventional lies," by which a faulty civilisation 

 seeks to make the best of both -worlds. Hence also the 

 pitiable state of the recognised religious bodies, most of 

 which admit large fragments, more or less distorted, of 

 true ethical teaching which as parts of the established 

 order they dare not apply. 



It will readily be seen that c< natural morality " corre- 

 sponds to the Third Stage of intellectual development. 

 It has already been characterised in describing that stage. 

 At that level experience is organised into conceptions, and 

 similarly conduct is formulated in general rules, but as 

 there is no penetrating analysis of the conceptions, so there 

 is no striving after the underlying purpose that might 

 justify but might also remodel the rules. This analysis, 

 which involves moral as well as intellectual insight, is the 

 foundation of a higher m^ral teaching, which has historic- 

 ally become current in a fragmentary manner and in very 

 diverse forms. The central idea which gives unity to 

 these differences is thai humanity is the object of man, 

 i.e., that the business of the human race is to work out 

 all that it has in it to be. In this conception the social 

 structure and even the current morality are treated as 

 servants rather than masters of human life. And if we 

 follow out this doctrine into all that it implies, we are led 

 to think of an ethical system which will be guided by the 

 conception of the human race as a whole, bound together by 

 the ties of a common nature, and capable under ascertain- 

 able conditions of a future for which all earlier evolution 

 is preparatory. 



10. Such a principle might serve as a basis for that 

 comprehensive harmony of conduct which we should 

 expect to find at the highest stage of development. In 



