Inhibition, therefore, is the organic foundation on which Morality
builds, not only that Morality which consists in abstention from certain
actions, but that which is manifested in active virtue. But inhibition
is a faculty which the organism has developed for its own ends, the
better and more easily to preserve its own life, and to render its power
of achievement greater. Morality makes use of this faculty, which it
finds ready to hand, for the ends of the community, and very often
against the immediate interests of the individual for whose advantage it
is nevertheless intended. Now the individual would not put up with this
inexpedient use, one is tempted to say this clever misuse, of one of its
organic capacities, if this yielding up of the mechanism of inhibition
to Morality were not beneficial to life and therefore came within the
sphere of the biological purpose of inhibition. By being grafted on a
pre-existent organic faculty Morality becomes such itself; it forms a
link in the chain of biological processes within the individual
organism; it ceases to be purely a product of society forced upon the
individual to his molestation and in spite of his annoyance; it acquires
the character of a differentiation of inhibition in order to help the
individual, or even to make it at all possible for him to adapt himself
to life in a society.
That under the present conditions obtaining on our planet the human
individual can only live in society demands no proof. And as he can only
live in society if he submits to its rules of good and bad, Morality,
which urges him to this submission, aids and even preserves his life. We
shall now show that inhibition, of which Morality is a differentiation
making it easier for the individual to adapt himself to the conditions
of social life, is of the greatest value to the individual from the
biological point of view.
The lowest forms of life it is possible for us to observe show nothing
which can be interpreted as inhibition. All external influences to which
they are not indifferent invariably produce the same effects. They
respond to every stimulus with a reflex action which reveals nothing
that we should be justified in describing as an activity of the will.
The reaction follows with strictly automatic regularity upon the
stimulus, and nothing intervenes between the two which would permit the
conclusion that in the simple organism there is any faculty that could
delay, modify or change the reaction to the external stimulus.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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