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��AMERICA!* ANTHROPOLOGIST
��[n. I
��1890
��opinions cannot abruptly be revolutionized; they can only be developed. The past cannot be ignored by the present ; the present is ever modifying the past. Healthy change must be evolution, not revolution, though there is an element of revolu- tion in all evolution. Something must be overthrown that evo- lution may be accomplished. The individuals of a species must die that new species may be developed, but the new species must be the offspring of the old.
The great moral teachers and prophets have never succeeded in establishing a principle of ethics in all its purity as conceived by themselves. The notions of ceremony developed during the stage of monarchy were modified by the teachings of the prophets, so that a ceremonial religion was developed into a fiducial religion in which the ceremonies are considered as effi- cient agencies of teaching; but the essential nature of ethical conduct is held to inhere in the opinions which men entertain. Ethics is a faith, and hence we call this stage of ethics fiducial. Men must entertain the opinions believed to be wise that they may gain that superlative happiness which is the reward of conduct.
But how shall men know the good from the evil conduct? By what criterion shall men be guided in the affairs of life? Here a threefold standard is erected. The first is the teaching of the ancients, the second is the teaching of the priesthood, the third is the voice of conscience. These three authorities are supposed to coincide in producing valid concepts of good and evil.
Conscience is the instinctive impulse to moral conduct. To understand this statement we must explain the origin of instincts. Instinct is to the emotions what intuition is to the intellections. Intuitions are habitual judgments of intellect, as instincts are habitual judgments of emotion. As intuitions become heredi- tary, so instincts become hereditary. The substrate of instinct is the choice exhibited in affinity. In the human mind the
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