of whatever possible combination of circumstances may in any way, however remotely, interfere with the fullest legitimate exercise of all the functions of physical and psychical life. To have this complex feeling sympathetically excited for persons whom one has never seen, and who are perhaps yet unborn, and still more, to be so far possessed by this highly generalized and impersonal sympathy as to risk one's own liberty and life in efforts to avert the possible evils which are the objects of its dread,-implies a power of representing absent relations such as has yet been acquired by only two or three of the most highly gifted families of mankind. And manifestly the sentiments which respond to the notions of justice and injustice in the abstract, are still more remotely representative, still more highly generalized, and still more thoroughly disengaged from the consideration of concrete instances of pleasure and pain.

To this expansion of the power of sympathetically representing feelings detached from the incidents of particular cases, until the sphere of its exercise has become even wider than the human race, and includes all sentient existence, is due our instinctive abhorrence of actions which the organically registered experience of mankind has associated with pain and evil, and our instinctive approval of actions similarly associated with pleasure and increased fulness of life. It is not that, as in intellectual progress, there has been a registration of inferences, at first conscious, but finally automatic; but it is that there has been a registration of feelings V respectively awakened by pleasure-giving and pain-giving actions. And just as men's intellectual conceptions of the causes of phenomena become more and more impersonal as they are extended over wider and wider groups of phenomena, generating at last an abstract conception of Universal Cause, so free from the element of personality that to less cultivated minds it seems atheistic; so in like manner, as the sympathetic feelings are extended over wider and wider

т

areas, no longer needing the stimulus of present pains and pleasures to call them forth, they generate at last an abstract moral sense, so free from the element of personality that to grosser minds it is unintelligible. The savage cannot understand the justice which he sees among Europeans, and the mercy of the white man is ascribed by him to imbecility or fear. To him some personal end seems necessary as an incentive to action. But the philanthropist finds an adequate incentive in the contemplation of injustice in the abstract.

Thus the ethical theories, as well as the psychology, of the schools of Hume and Kant, appear to be reconciled in the deeper synthesis rendered possible by the theory of evolution. On the one hand, it is a corollary from the laws of life that actions desired by the individual and approved by the community must in the long run be those which tend to heighten the life respectively of the individual and of the community. And on the other hand, it is equally true that there is a highly complex feeling, the product of a slow emotional evolution, which prompts us to certain lines of conduct irrespective of any conscious estimate of pleasures or utilities. In no department of inquiry is the truth and grandeur of the Doctrine of Evolution more magnificently illustrated than in the province of ethics.

Before we conclude, there are one or two further points to which it seems necessary to allude. In asserting that we possess an instinctive and inherited moral sense, it is not meant that we possess, anterior to education and experience, an organic preference for certain particular good actions, and an organic repugnance to certain particular bad actions. We do not inherit a horror of stealing, any more than the Hindu inherits the horror of killing cattle. We simply 1 inherit a feeling which leads us, when we are told that stealing is wrong, to shun it, without needing to be taught that it is detrimental to society. Hence there is a chance for pathological disturbances in the relations between the

moral sense and the actions with which it is concerned. Imperfectly adjusted moral codes arise, and false principles of action gain temporary currency. These, nevertheless, come ultimately to outrage our sympathies, and are consequently overthrown; while the principles of action which really tend to heighten the life of society are sustained by our sympathies ever more and more forcibly, and at last become invested with a sacredness which is denied to the others. Hence arises the ethical distinction between mala prohibita and mala in se.

Finally, it is not to be denied that, when the intelligence is very high, there is likely to arise a deliberate pursuit of moral excellence, attended by a distinct knowledge of the. elements in which such excellence consists. Instead of being primeval, as the cruder utilitarianism seems to have imagined, such conscious devotion to ends conducive to the happiness✓ of society is the latest and highest product of social evolution, and becomes possible only when the moral sense is extremely developed. At this stage, ethical conceptions begin to be reflected back upon the conduct of the individual where it concerns solely or chiefly himself; and the selfregarding virtues, as Mr. Darwin calls them, which are quite unknown save in a high state of civilization, come into existence. The injury of one's self, by evil thoughts, intemperate behaviour, or indulgence of appetite, comes to be regarded as not only physically injurious, but morally wrong; and there arises the opinion that it is selfish and wicked for one to neglect one's own health or culture. Here we approach the limits at which morality shades off into religion. For, as I shall hereafter show, Religion views the individual in his relations to the Infinite Power manifested in a universe of causally connected phenomena, as Morality views him in relation to his fellow-creatures. To violate the decrees of Nature comes to be considered a sin, capable of 1 See below, part iii. chap. v.

awakening keen remorse; for to him whose mental habits have been nurtured by scientific studies, the principles of action prescribed by the need for harmonizing inner with outer relations are, in the truest sense, the decrees of God.

And now, having reached the terminus of our inquiry, let us look back over the course for a moment, that we may see the character of the progress we have achieved. Such a retrospect is here especially needed, because the complexity of our subject has been so great, and the range of our illustrations so wide, that the cardinal points in our argument have perhaps run some risk of getting overlaid and concealed from view, and in particular it may not be sufficiently obvious how completely we have attained the object set before us as the goal of the present chapter and its predecessor, namely, to explain the genesis of the psychical forces which wrought the decisive change from animality to humanity. That we may well appreciate the solid consistency of the entire argument concerning the Genesis of Man, let us therefore contemplate in a single view its various factors.

We have seen that the progress from brute to man has been but slightly characterized by change in general bodily structure in comparison with the enormous change which has been wrought in the cerebrum, and in those highest psychical functions which stand in correlation with the condition of the cerebrum. We have seen that the development of these highest psychical functions, in all their wondrous variety and complexity, has consisted at bottom in the increase of the power of mentally representing objects and relations remote from sense. By the reiterated testimony of many diverse kinds of illustrative facts, we have been convinced that in mere quantity of representative capacity, with its infinitely various consequences, the civilized man surpasses the lowest savage by a far greater interval than

that by which the lowest savage surpasses the highest ape; just as the gulf between the cerebral capacity of the Englishman and that of the non-Aryan dweller in Hindustan is six times greater than the gulf which similarly divides the nonAryan Hindu from the gorilla. And we have indicated in sundry ways how this increase in representative capacity, itself a pre-requisite to any high degree of social combination, has been furthered by each advance in social combination, so that the enormous psychical progress achieved since mankind became distinctly human has been mainly dependent upon that increasing heterogeneity of experience which increasing social integration has supplied.

But in spite of the fact that the psychical progress achieved since mankind became distinctly human is so much greater in quantity than that which was required to carry it from apehood to manhood, we were led to adopt the Duke of Argyll's suggestion, that the boundary was really crossed when this preliminary and less conspicuous psychical progress had been achieved. And working out the happy thought which science owes to Mr. Wallace, we concluded that this comparatively inconspicuous but all-essential step in psychical progress was taken when the intelligence of the progenitors of mankind had reached the point where a slight increase in representative capacity came to be of greater utility to the species than any practicable variation in bodily structure. Here our first line of inquiry ended. So far as the mere subordination of physical to psychical modification is concerned, the character of the progress from apehood to manhood now became intelligible.

But at this point we were confronted with a new question, suggested by some of the conclusions obtained on our first line of inquiry. Having perceived that the intellectual progress, or increase in representative capacity, which distinguishes man from brute, is so intimately connected with man's capacity for social combination, it became needful