Most of us are aware of Charles Darwin, the British biologist who devised what has become known as the theory of natural selection and evolution.  Although Darwin was acutely aware of the potential flaws in his theory of species development, nowhere did he struggle more with this than in his conclusions about morality.  People did not designate actions as moral because they believed such actions would increase their happiness in the future, he suggested, but rather because they had concluded that these actions had increased happiness in the past.  Put another way, we humans decide what is moral on the basis of what has happened rather than on the basis of what will (or might) happen.
     Setting aside the troubling question of how to define the moral sense and why it has somehow risen, over a period of millions of years, out of formerly inert matter, we should note that defining morality in this way renders it highly subjective.  If it has worked in the past, the reasoning goes, it should continue to work in the future.  Sometimes this is true, sometimes it is not.  On the one hand, this allows us to shape our morality according to the dictates of our particular moment; on the other hand, it leaves us without any solid basis for morality other than our happiness, itself a rather slippery term.
     Justice is not necessarily happy, nor is rectitude always fun.  Morality should be more than happiness, and it should be predicated on more than personal--or group--whimsy.  Better that we struggle to fit our convictions into "what is" than allow "what is" to shape our convictions.  Sure, we need to be ready to change with changing times, but not to let changing times make what has never been morally defensible, in turn, morally supreme.