DARWINISM AND DIVINITY. lg3 



ter in England who can blush half so expressively as a dog found out 

 in sharp practice blushing, of course, being taken in a sense appli- 

 cable to the dog's tail ? Whether wild animals have such a sense of 

 the value of any positive laws is more than we know ; but w r ild ani- 

 mals, down to the lowest orders, show at least the maternal instinct. 

 The devotion of beasts to their young belongs, one would say, to the 

 highest order of moral beauty except that it extends too low down 

 among animated beings to please some people. Yet we may pre- 

 sume that the most hard-hearted of metaphysicians would find it hard 

 to suppress an emotion of sympathy and approval at the sight of a 

 bird overcoming its timidity to fight for its little puff-balls of children. 

 It is a more pathetic if not a more sublime sight than those starry 

 heavens with which we are so often bored. There is a bit of meta- 

 physical quibbling, by which it is endeavored to evade the obvious in- 

 ference. It seems to come to this, when analyzed, that, though the 

 bird performs an heroic action, it has never framed the general propo- 

 , sition, Mothers ought to love their young. That is undeniable ; but 

 surely the bird is on the high-road to it. Light up its feeble brain 

 with a little more intelligence, and it will have no trouble in fitting its 

 instincts with the proper strait-waistcoats of formula. To deny virtue 

 to the bird would be to deny it equally to the savage, who has move- 

 ments of generosity and self-devotion, though it has never occurred to 

 him to speculate on moral philosophy. There is, of course, a difference 

 between the virtue which merely results from the spontaneous play of 

 unselfish instincts, and that which includes a certain fist of definite 

 propositions on the subject formed by reflection and observation. But 

 where the first is present, even in a high degree, it is not difficult to 

 account for the gradual development of the second. 



The argument, however, has another fatal weakness, if it is intend- 

 ed to raise a presumption against the possible passage from apehood 

 to manhood. Assume, if you please, that the difference is as wide as 

 possible. Suppose that reason and the moral sense are as different 

 from the rudimentary thoughts and passions that animate the feeble 

 brute-brain as water from fire or as mind from matter. That will not 

 raise any presumption that there must be a sudden gap in the chain of 

 animated beings, unless you can prove that the new element, whatever 

 it may be called, must enter, as it were, at one bound. If reason be 

 radically different from instinct, yet reason may be present in some 

 creatures in a merely rudimentary form. The question, indeed, does 

 not admit of argument. We always have before our eyes a perfect 

 and uninterrupted series. The child of six months old is less intelli- 

 gent than a full-grown dog ; and if we would imagine the development 

 of man from monkey, we have only to suppose the first monkey to be 

 the equal of an average baby (say) of one year old, the monkey's son 

 to be equal to a baby of a year and a day, and so on. We may thus 

 proceed by perfectly imperceptible stages, and in the course of three 

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