do not call its conduct moral. But in the case of man, who alone can
with certainty be ranked as a moral being, actions of a certain class
are called moral, whether performed deliberately, after a struggle with
opposing motives, or impulsively through instinct, or from the effects
of slowly-gained habit.
But to return to our more immediate subject. Although some instincts
are more powerful than others, and thus lead to corresponding actions,
yet it is untenable, that in man the social instincts (including the
love of praise and fear of blame) possess greater strength, or have,
through long habit, acquired greater strength than the instincts of
self-preservation, hunger, lust, vengeance, etc. Why then does man
regret, even though trying to banish such regret, that he has followed
the one natural impulse rather than the other; and why does he further
feel that he ought to regret his conduct? Man in this respect differs
profoundly from the lower animals. Nevertheless we can, I think, see
with some degree of clearness the reason of this difference.
Man, from the activity of his mental faculties, cannot avoid
reflection: past impressions and images are incessantly and clearly
passing through his mind. Now with those animals which live permanently
in a body, the social instincts are ever present and persistent. Such
animals are always ready to utter the danger-signal, to defend the
community, and to give aid to their fellows in accordance with their
habits; they feel at all times, without the stimulus of any special
passion or desire, some degree of love and sympathy for them; they are
unhappy if long separated from them, and always happy to be again in
their company. So it is with ourselves. Even when we are quite alone,
how often do we think with pleasure or pain of what others think of
us, of their imagined approbation or disapprobation; and this all
follows from sympathy, a fundamental element of the social instincts. A
man who possessed no trace of such instincts would be an unnatural
monster. On the other hand, the desire to satisfy hunger, or any
passion such as vengeance, is in its nature temporary, and can for a
time be fully satisfied. Nor is it easy, perhaps hardly possible, to
call up with complete vividness the feeling, for instance, of hunger;
nor indeed, as has often been remarked, of any suffering. The instinct
of self-preservation is not felt except in the presence of danger; and
many a coward has thought himself brave until he has met his enemy face
to face. The wish for another man s property is perhaps as persistent a
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