THE DATA OF ETHICS. 
93 
acts are no longer isolated, but are connected into series ; 
they are more delicately adjusted to ends ; and they are more 
varied in kind. In order to preserve this continuity, fitness, 
and variety, the simple and presentative feelings must be 
restrained by complex and representative feelings ; foresight 
must be exercised, and many immediate pleasures renounced 
for a greater but more remote good. The savage will hurt or 
maim himself to avert the anger of his fetisli; he will risk 
liis life in battle in obedience to the command of his chief, or 
to win a reputation for courage. 
And here, indeed, we are “ tracing the genesis of the 
moral consciousness,” the main feature of which is self- 
control. This self-control is evolved within and by the re¬ 
ligious, political, and social controls ; but it differs from them 
in referring to the intrinsic , while they refer to the extrinsic 
effects of actions. The three external controls co-operate 
primarily for securing success in war, and secondarily for 
restraining aggressions within the community; they seek to 
preserve the society from foes without and from foes within. 
But the savage obeys his chiefs command, or sacrifices to his 
fetish, or to his primitive “ Mrs. Grundy,” not so much from 
any perception that the natural consequences of non¬ 
conformity will be disastrous, as from a fear of its incidental 
consequences. He refrains from hurting his neighbour, not 
because he is unwilling that his neighbour should be hurt, but 
because he does not want to be punished. In time, however, 
the united influence of the political, religious, and social 
controls engenders a type of character which does 
spontaneously what was at first done under compulsion. 
From accumulated racial experiences of utility, moral intui¬ 
tions are developed, and the pain which was of old connected 
simply with the punishment now becomes connected with 
the action to be punished. From the principles of evolution, 
it is as clear that this must happen as that individual pleasures 
must be correlated with individual benefits, and vice versa ; 
for if the being best fitted to the physical environment is the 
most likely to survive and to leave offspring which may 
inherit its endowments, not less is this true of the being best 
fitted to the social environment. There are laws which 
impose penalties on me if I rob, or maim, or kill. If I have 
a nature sufficiently sympathetic to make me shrink from the 
intrinsic as well as the extrinsic effects of robbing, maiming, 
or killing—not only from the pain I may probably suffer, but 
also from the pain I shall certainly cause—then I am less 
likely to subject myself to punishment, and, so far, more likely 
to live and prosper. 
