the
checking of an impulse proven disadvantageous, was an earlier and easier
form of action than the later human power to consciously decide on and
follow a course of action with no stimulus but one's own will.

Primitive ethics consists mostly of Tabus--the things that are
forbidden; and all our dim notions of ethics to this day, as well as
most of our religions, deal mainly with forbidding.

This is almost the whole of our nursery government, to an extent shown
by the well-worn tale of the child who said her name was "Mary." "Mary
what?" they asked her. And she answered, "Mary Don't." It is also the
main body of our legal systems--a complex mass of prohibitions and
preventions. And even in manners and conventions, the things one should
not do far outnumber the things one should. A general policy of negation
colors our conceptions of ethics and religion.

When the positive side began to be developed, it was at first in purely
arbitrary and artificial form. The followers of a given religion were
required to go through certain motions, as prostrating themselves,
kneeling, and the like; they were required to bring tribute to the gods
and their priests, sacrifices, tithes, oblations; they were set little
special performances to go through at given times; the range of things
forbidden was broad; the range of things commanded was narrow. The
Christian religion, practically interpreted, requires a fuller "change
of heart" and change of life than any preceding it; which may account at
once for its wide appeal to enlightened peoples, and to its scarcity of
application.

Again, in surveying the field, it is seen that as our grasp of ethical
values widened, as we called more and more acts and tendencies "right"
and "wrong," we have shown astonishing fluctuations and vagaries in our
judgment. Not only in our religions, which have necessarily upheld each
its own set of prescribed actions as most "right," and its own special
prohibitions as most "wrong"; but in our beliefs about ethics and our
real conduct, we have varied absurdly.

Take, for instance, the ethical concept among "gentlemen" a century or
so since, which put the paying of one's gambling debts as a well-nigh
sacred duty, and the paying of a tradesman who had fed and clothed one
as a quite negligible matter. If the process of gambling was of social
service, and the furnishing of food and clothes was not, this might be
good ethics; but as the contrary is true, we hav