In Almost Any Field It Is Wise To Precede Definition By An Impartial
Survey Of The Subject Matter. So If We Are To Form An Unbiased
Conception Of What Morality Is, It Will Be Safest To Consider First
What The Morals Of Men Actually Have Been, How They Came Into Being,
And What Function They Have Served In Human Life. Thus We Shall Be
Sure That Our Theory Is In Touch With Reality, And Be Saved From Mere
Closet-Philosophies And Irrelevant Speculations. Our Task In This First
Part Will Be Not To Criticize By Reference To Any Ethical Standards,
But To Observe And Describe, As A Mere Bit Of Preliminary Sociology,
What It Is In Their Lives To Which Men Have Given The Name "Morality,"
Of What Use It Has Been, And Through The Action Of What Forces It Has
Tended To Develop. With These Data In Mind, We Shall Be The Better
Able, In The Second Part, To Formulate Our Criteria For Judging The
Different Codes Of Morality; We Shall Find That We Are But Making
Explicit And Conscious The Considerations That, Unexpressed And
Unrealized, Have Been The Persistent And Underlying Factors In Their
Development. How Early In The Evolutionary Process Did Personal
Morality Of Some Sort Emerge? Of Course The Words (In Any Language)
And The Explicit Conceptions "Morality," "Duty," "Right," "Wrong," Etc,
Are Very Late In Appearance, Presupposing As They Do A Power Of
Reflection And Abstraction Which Develops Only In Man And With A
Considerable Civilization. Even In The Homeric Poems, Which Reflect
A Degree Of Mental Cultivation In Some Respects Equal To Our Own, These
Concepts Hardly Appear. But Ages Earlier, Far Back In The Course Of
Animal Evolution, There Emerged Phenomena Which We May Consider
Rudimentary Forms Of Morality; And All Early Human History Was Replete
Writh Unanalyzed And Unformulated Moral Struggles. Concretely, We Mean
By Personal Morality Courage, Industriousness, Self-Control, Prudence,
Temperance, And Other Similar Phenomena, Which Have This In Common,
That They Involve A Crossing Of Earlier-Developed Impulses And
Redirection Of The Individual's Conduct, With The Result, Normally,
That His Welfare Is Enhanced. Exceptions To This Result Will Be
Considered Later; But The Point To Be Noted At The Outset Is That
Personal Morality Is Not At First The Outcome Of Reflection, Or A
Purely Human Affair. If We Were To Take The Term "Morality" In A
Narrower Sense, As Meaning Conscious Obedience To A Sense Of Duty Or
To The Moral Law, It Would Obviously Be A Late Product. But Morality
In This Sense Is Only An Ultimate Development Of What In Its Less
Conscious And Reflective Forms Dates Far Back In Pre-Human History.
