ABSTRACT
There is at present a strong tendency for decent people, especially in the social sciences, to hold that it has no internal causes in human nature – that it is just the result of outside pressures which could be removed. Now obviously there are powerful outside causes. There are physical pains, diseases, economic shortages and dangers – everything that counts as ‘natural evil’. There are also cultural factors – bad example, bad teaching, bad organization. But these cultural causes do not solve our problem because we must still ask, how did the bad customs start, how do they spread, and how do they resist counter-conditioning? Can people be merely channels? If they are channels, out of what tap do the bad customs originally flow? And if they are not mere channels, if they contribute something, what is that contribution?
