CHAPTER VI 



ASSOCIATED RESPONSIBILITY 



In the primitive natural view conduct appears as good 

 or bad only in a comparative sense. It is first judged in 

 proportion to the benefit or injury secured by the acting 

 individual; and any one action may be good or may be bad 

 according to its effect, which will depend upon environment 

 as well as upon its initial character. There is in this evi- 

 dently no absolute of goodness or badness, nor even any 

 possibility of recognition of a fixed standard of virtue ; nor 

 any ground for a grouping of acts into the two classes of 

 good and evil. It is at first all a question of expediency. 

 The moral law has not any visible force in these conditions. 

 But these conditions pertain only to a life solitary in a 

 sphere of action. Such a life is possible only in a transitory 

 condition, yet it is just in this transitory phase that the 

 principle develops which underlies moral conduct. The 

 lowest life principle begins in a solitude of unconscious- 

 ness from which consciousness dawns, having only respon- 

 siveness akin to chemical reaction, without volition, and 

 being far below the possession of intention or will. And 

 when these things, volition and will, become evident, there 

 also appears as a thing simultaneously established, the asso- 



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