underlying utility that is of ultimate importance.  Very simple and obvious causes have continually tended to destroy customs which made in the contrary direction and to select those which, however originating, made for either or both of these two ends.  It is these customs, important for the welfare of the individual or tribe, which we call morality.  If the original instincts of mankind had been delicately enough adjusted to their needs, there would have been no need of these secondary and overruling impulses, and the differentiation of impulse and duty, of the natural and the spiritual man, would never have arisen.  But actually, mankind inherited from its brute ancestry instincts which, unguided, wrought great harm.  Without the development of some system of checks men would forever have been the prey of overindulgence, sexual wantonness, civil strife, and apathy.  They would have remained beasts and never won their dominance on the earth.  Even rudimentary moral codes came as an amelioration of this dangerous and unhappy situation; they enabled men, by abstention from dangerous passions and from idleness, to make their lives efficient, interesting, and comparatively free from pain; by cooperation and mutual service to resist their enemies and develop a civilization.  Morality thus has been the greatest instrument of progress, the most fundamental of man’s achievements, the most important part of the wisdom of the race.

Is moral progress certain?

A measure of hopefulness is to be won from the observation that, quite apart from the conscious effort of men, natural laws have been making for moral progress.  And unquestionably there has been a great advance in morality within historic times.  We are forever past the age of cannibalism, of human torture, of slavery, of widespread infanticide.  War is on the wane and may vanish within a few generations.  Never before was there so much sympathy, so much conscious dedication to human service, in the world.  We are apt to idealize the past; we sigh for a “return to nature,” or to the golden age of Greece.  And there is some justification in our regrets.  Simplicity of living, hospitality, courage, patriotism one virtue or another has been more conspicuous in some particular age than ever before or since.  Moral progress wavers, and not all that is won is retained.  But on the whole there can be no doubt that we stand on a higher level morally than the Greeks who had vices and sins that we scarcely hear of today and incomparably higher than savage races.  Even within a lifetime one can see the wave of moral advance push forward.  Yet this observable progress is not so certain of continuance that we can lapse into inertia and trust it to go on of itself.  With the softening of the struggle for existence among men, with the disappearance of danger from wild animals, and the increasing conquest over nature, the chief means of moral progress hitherto are being removed.  More and more we must rely on man’s conscious