Problems of Conduct: An Introductory Survey of EthicsDrake, Durant
Philosophy
Problems of Conduct: An Introductory Survey of Ethics
Drake, Durant
Ethics
(2) In primitive life there is a drastic repression of any incipient
rebelliousness, through the enforcement of custom or explicit law in
the ways we have indicated; the fear of a heavy discouragement to any
innovator. If men dared to defy the community morals, they were very
likely to be put to death before the habit of free judgment had much
time to spread. There was thus a sort of artificial selection for
survival of the conventional type, and weeding-out of the freethinker
and moral genius. Even in historic times this process has continued
and been an enormous clog on human progress. The man of revolutionary
moral insight has had to pay the penalty, if not of death as in
the case of Socrates or of Jesus-at least of ridicule and ostracism,
of excommunication and isolation as, in our own day, with Tolstoy.
Many and many a saint who might have been a beacon-light to mankind
has lived under the curses or sneers of his fellows and died in
loneliness, to be soon forgotten. A few have, after years of opposition,
obtained a following and accomplished great reforms, as did Buddha,
Mohammed, St. Francis, and Luther. But none can count the potential
reformers, the men of new insight, of individual moral judgment, who
have been crushed by the weight of group-opposition. Man has been the
worst enemy of his own progress.
(3) There is another aspect to this selective process, noted before
in another context- the struggle for existence between groups. So
intense are these tribal struggles in early society that harmony within
a group is absolutely necessary. Individualization means
disorganization; and whatever communities developed free thought and
divergent ideas were at a disadvantage when it came to action. Many
such groups, ahead of their rivals in individual moral development,
were wiped out by barbaric armies that gave unquestioning obedience
to the tribal will and worked together like a machine. Up to a certain
stage in human development individuality was an undesirable variation
and was ruthlessly repressed, sometimes by the execution of the
particular offenders, sometimes by the destruction of the group to
which they belonged and which they by their divergence weakened.
What forces made against custom-morality? Against these repressive
forces, however, other forces were from early times urging men on to
reject the tyranny of custom. Those inward promptings that we call
conscience were continually tending to become less the echo of the
group conventions and more the expression of the individual's needs
and deepest desires.
(1) At bottom, of course, lay the natural restlessness and passions
of men, the impatience of control, the longing for liberty, and the
craving for self-expression. The combative instinct, pride, obstinacy,
and notably the sex-instinct, were from earliest times spurring men
on to a disregard of the conventional and the formation of individual
standards.
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