170 ORGANIC EVOLUTION — MENTAL 



knows to his discomfiture, resembling in this the 

 modesty of Arab ladies as regards their faces.^ Yet the 

 English infant exhibits no corporal modesty, and the 

 English-bom adult reared among savages has none of 

 it. Nothing indeed can be plainer than that moral 

 natures, or so-called moral natures, are acquired, not 

 inborn. But because in man, the highest and mentally 

 (perhaps physically also) the most variable of animals, 

 the most responsive mentally to appropriate stimulation, 

 that which is mentally acquired so greatly predominates 

 over that which is mentally inborn, because in him 

 instinct is so overpowered by reason (or perverted 

 reason), his acquired traits often possess all the strength 

 that instincts do in the lower animals. How many 

 instincts, for example, are overmastered and set at 

 nought by the abstemious monk or nun ? 



Speaking of moral systems the historian Buckle 

 observes — 



"Applying this test to moral motives, or to the 

 dictates of what is called moral instinct, we shall at once 

 see how extremely small is the influence those motives 

 have exercised over the progress of civilization. For 

 there is unquestionably nothing to 'be found in the 

 world which has undergone so little change as those 

 great dogmas of which moral systems are composed. 

 To do good to others, to sacrifice for their benefit 

 your own wishes, to love your neighbour as yourself, to 

 forgive your enemies, to restrain your passions, to 

 honour your parents, to respect those who are set over 

 you — these and a few others are the sole essentials of 

 morals; but they have been known for thousands of 

 years, and not one jot or one tittle has been added to 



^ I have read somewhere, though I cannot lay hands on my 

 authority, of a traveller, I think in the island of Socotra, who 

 unexpectedly met an Arab woman. He relates that she 

 imiuediately covered her face with her petticoats, thus 

 completely exposing the lower half of her body. 



