Note 27 — Chapter II · Contamination of Instincts in Primitive Technology

Traditionally a theoretical presumption has been held to the contrary. It has been taken for granted that the institutional outcome of men’s native dispositions will be sound and salutary; but this presumption overlooks the effects of complication and deflection among instincts, due to cumulative habit. The tradition has come down as an article of uncritical faith from the historic belief in a beneficent Order of Nature; which in turn runs back to the early-modern religious conception of a Providential Order instituted by a shrewd and benevolent Creator; which rests on an anthropomorphic imputation of parental solicitude and workmanship to an assumed metaphysical substratum of things. This traditional view therefore is substantially theological and has that degree of validity that may be derived from the putative characteristics of any anthropomorphic divinity.