If social well-being is taken in its broadest sense, then all moral behavior is social, and all social behavior comes under one of the three types of morality.  Training for citizenship, for social efficiency, for earning a livelihood, all have a moral aspect.  It is only as the individual is trained to live a complete life as one of a group that he can be trained to be fully moral, and training for complete social living must include training in morality.  Hence for the remainder of this discussion the two terms will be considered as synonymous.  We hear it sometimes said, “training in morals and manners,” as if the two were distinct, and yet a full, realization of what is for social betterment along emotional and intellectual lines must include a realization of the need of manners.  Of course there are degrees of morality or immorality according as the act influences society much or little—­all crimes are not equally odious, nor all virtues equally commendable, but any act that touches the well-being of the group must come under this category.

From the foregoing paragraph, the logical conclusion would be that there is no instinct or inborn tendency that is primarily and distinctly moral as over against those that are social.  That is the commonly accepted belief to-day.  There is no moral instinct.  Morality finds its root in the original nature of man, but not in a single moral instinct.  It is, on the other hand, the outgrowth of a number of instincts all of which have been listed under the head of the social instinct.  Man has in his original equipment tendencies that will make him a moral individual if they are developed, but they are complex, not simple.  Some of these social tendencies which are at the root of moral conduct are gregariousness, desire for approval, dislike of scorn, kindliness, attention to human beings, imitation, and others.  Now, although man possesses these tendencies as a matter of original equipment, he also possesses tendencies which are opposed to these, tendencies which lead to the advancement of self, rather than the well-being of the group.  Some of these are fighting, mastery, rivalry, jealousy, ownership.  Which of these sets of tendencies is developed and controls the life of the individual is a matter of training and environment.  In the last chapter it was pointed out that morality was much more susceptible to environmental influences than intellectual achievement, because it was much more a direction and guidance of capacities and tendencies possessed by every one.  One’s character is largely a product of one’s environment.  In proof of this, read the reports of reform schools, and the like.  Children of criminal parents, removed from the environment of crime, grow up into moral persons.  The pair of Jukes who left the Juke clan lost their criminal habits and brought up a family of children who were not immoral.  Education cannot produce geniuses, but it can produce men and women whose chief concern is the well-being of the group.