Some we approve;
some we disapprove. We evidently appeal to a standard by which the
individual is judged. The appeal to the nature of man helps us little
unless we can agree upon what we may accept as a just revelation of that
nature--a pattern of some sort, divergence from which may be called
unnatural, and is to be reprobated.
Neither Aristotle, nor those who, after him, took human nature as the
moral norm, were without some conception of such a pattern. They kept in
view certain things that men may become rather than certain others. They
accepted as their standard a type of human nature which tends, on the
whole, to realize itself more and more in the course of development of
human communities. But as different human societies differ more or less
in the characteristics which they tend to transmit to their members, in
the kind of man whom they tend to form, we find the ideal of human
nature, with which we are presented, somewhat vague and fluctuating.
Different traits are dwelt upon by different moralists.
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