ABSTRACT
Most of us, nowadays, are aware of the influence on morals of physical conditions. Climate determines what crops shall be sown; and the richness or poverty of the soil, the abundance or absence of fish and game, play an important part in determining both the temper and the customs of a community. The distinguishing marks of the moral ideas which derive from social necessity, as of those which flow from climatic and economic causes, is that they are more or less rational. Where they are not, they fail to be rational largely because the necessary facts are not known, of if known are not understood. On some biological necessities, communal codes will agree—or the community which has failed to think correctly will die out. Some philosophers have held that only states of mind can be called good or bad, and that they possess these qualities irrespective of the accidents which may happen to the universe.
