It
is built on the "higher-than-self" principle which is involved in the
moral sense itself. And this higher-than-self is not just a collective
naturalism, a social consciousness, as Durkheim and Overstreet and
Miss Harrison would say. The simplest introspective act will prove
that. For a man cannot ignore self-condemnation as if it were only a
natural difficulty, nor disparage it as though it were merely humanly
imposed. We think it comes from that which is above and without,
because it speaks to the solitary and the unique, not the social
and the common part of us. Hence conscience is not chiefly a tribal
product, for it is what separates us from the group and in our
isolation unites us with something other than the group. "Against
Thee, Thee only, have I sinned and done this evil in Thy sight." So
religious preaching perpetually holds us up above our natural selves
and the natural order.
Thus man must live by an other-than-natural law if he is to preserve
the family, which is the social unit of civilization. Its very
existence depends upon modifying and transforming natural hunger by a
diviner instinct, by making voluntary repressions, willing sacrifices
of the lower to the higher, the subordinating of the law of self and
might to the law of sacrifice and love--this is what preserves family
life. Animals indeed rear and cherish their young and for the mating
season remain true to one another, but no animality _per se_ ever yet
built a home.
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