Some evolutionary psychologists have argued that human morality originated from evolutionary processes. An innate tendency to develop a sense of right and wrong helps an individual to survive and reproduce in a species with complex social interactions. Selected behaviours, seen in abstraction as moral codes, are seen to be common to all human cultures, and reflect, in their development, similarities to natural selection and these aspects of morality can be seen in as the basis of some religious doctrine. From this, some also argue that there may be a simple Darwinian explanation for the existence of religion: that, regardless of the validity of religious beliefs, religion tends to encourage behaviour beneficial to the species, as a code of morality tends to encourage communality, and communality tends to assist survival.
These explanations for the existence of morality do not, however, actually assist in deciding what is right. They do not suggest that an individual's morality should be determined by what is best for the species. An explanation of why humans may have a moral basis does not imply that they should hold these views.
Morality in Juridical Systems
In some juridical systems, the word morality concretely means a requirement for the access to certain charges or careers, or for the obtaining of certain licenses or concessions, and generally consists of the absence of previous records on (e.g.) crimes, bankruptcy, political or commercial irregularities.
In some systems, the lack of morality of the individual can also be a sufficient cause for punishment, or can be an element for the grading of the punishment.
Especially in the systems where modesty (i.e., with reference to sexual crimes) is legally protected or otherwise regulated, the definition of morality as a legal element and in order to determine the cases of infringement, is usually left to the vision and appreciation of the single judge and hardly ever precisely specified. In such cases, it is common to verify an application of the prevalent common morality of the interested community, that consequently becomes enforced by the law for further reference.
The Moral - in Story
A moral is a one sentence remark made at the end of many children's stories that expresses the intended meaning, or the moral message, of the tale. For example, at the end of Aesop's fable about the tortoise and the hare, in which the plodding and determined tortoise wins a race against the much-faster yet debilitatingly arrogant hare, the moral is "slow and steady wins the race."
Morals have long been included in children's literature, perhaps because many of the stories written for children have been written for the purpose of teaching and guiding children, as opposed to entertaining them.
Many morals are even introduced with the phrase, "The moral of the story is..." to emphasize to the reader what the point of the episode was.
Morals have grown increasingly out of fashion in modern storytelling, and are now usually only included for ironic purposes.
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