Morality occupies such a large place in civilization that the mistaken view has arisen among many moral philosophers that it is the aim of civilization and has no aim other than itself. Closer investigation shows this to be an error, a reversal of the true relation. Morality is no aim, certainly no aim to itself, it is a means to an end, the most important, most indispensable means to the one end, to bring about civilization, to maintain and refine it, and adapt it more and more to its task. But the task of civilization, as I have shown, is to preserve, facilitate and enrich the life of the individual and the species. Morality therefore is the most important form in which the instinct of self-preservation in the species is manifested, and to deny progress to it implies the assumption that the species does not possess the impulse to preserve and beautify its existence, that its instinct of self-preservation flags, that it does not recognize its aim and is ignorant of the path leading to its goal. This assumption, however, is contradicted by all, and supported by none, of the phenomena observable in the life of the species--the absolute increase of the population of the earth, the prolongation of individual life and of the age of efficiency, the combating of every kind of harmful thing. The steadfast self-control of civilized man compared with the unreliability of the savage, who appears capricious and unaccountable because he freely obeys every impulse, proves the progressive development of the faculty of inhibition in the individual organism. The order and definite organization of modern society, the rule of law, men's equality before the law, the guarantee of freedom and respect for the person, all these compared with the state of nations in earlier times (actually anarchy under a mantle of tyranny and the unlimited power of a few mighty ones over the helpless masses) prove the progressive development of civilization in the social organism. But logically the progressive development of Morality itself must correspond to the progressive development of its instrument, inhibition, and of its product, civilization.