And
thus we are apt to fall into the opposite error of supposing that our
impulses towards good action are entirely the products of education,
training, public opinion, and so forth. Let the reader refer, for
instance, to such a celebrated work as John Stuart Mill's
"Utilitarianism," and it will be seen how wide of the mark it was
possible for even a great thinker to go, when his ideas of mind were
unguided by the light of evolution. Even in the greatest writer of that
time not a syllable do we find as to the parental instinct. "As is my
own belief," says Mill, "the moral feelings are not innate but
acquired." Yet we have seen convincing evidence which teaches us that
the moral feelings spring essentially from the root of the parental
instinct, without which mankind could not continue for another
generation, and than which there is nothing more fundamental and
essential in any type of human nature that can persist.
The importance of noting this can be clearly stated. We are here dealing
with something which is not for us to implant, but which is already part
of the plant, so to speak, and which it is for us to tend. Like other
innate features of mankind, its transmission from generation to
generation is notably independent of the effects of education, the
effects of use and disuse. This is a difficult thing of which to
persuade people, but it is the fact. Education, environment, training,
opportunity, habit, public opinion, social prejudice--all these and
such other influences may and do affect the maternal instinct in the
individual for good or for evil.
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