164 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



selves as using within fixed limits this physical organism is an experi- 

 ence too unique to come within nerve-actions and reactions before 

 pleasure and pain. 



There is no need to multiply illustrations of the exercise of will in 

 holding muscles still against pain or of those higher manifestations 

 where we endure agony, not from any present suffering, but to avoid 

 future loss. 



In conclusion, and for completeness, reference should be made to 

 the moral consciousness, i. e., the knowledge of obligation. This, too, is 

 a fact in human experience, and as such demands to be traced to its 

 ultimates. A significant thing, from the philosophical side, is Mr. 

 Spencer's anticipatory publication of the " Data of Ethics." By this 

 publication Mr. Spencer has recognized, what many of his smaller 

 adherents fail to know, that, in ethics, as an attempt to give a rational 

 account of the consciousness of obligation, all thinking finds its high- 

 est and most serious application. 



"We discover in the nervous system no provision for the conscious- 

 ness of duty ; indeed, put in this bald way, no materialist would look 

 there for any such consciousness. Duty as something to be done for 

 its own sake, apart from creed, or sect, or party, or consequences, is 

 properly considered an evidence of culture in thought and action. It 

 is futile to attempt to resist the application of evolution to ethics by 

 any appeal to the transcendent beauty of the moral ideal. The rose 

 is a transcendent thing in color, fragrance, and outline ; still, it de- 

 velops from that which has none of these. 



Development of some kind is a fact. The stress of inquiry in 

 ethics is, I think, here : Can the sense of right and wrong, however 

 rudimentary, be produced by pains and pleasures ? In the nervous 

 system we have the physical antecedents for pain and pleasure; though 

 no such sensations are in the nervous system, they are in us. Ethics 

 therefore presents the development theory a further difficulty, viz., the 

 one of passing rationally from pains and pleasures to right and wrong. 

 Even Mr. Spencer's form of the development theory, which would seek 

 to find in the conduct called ethical but a part of conduct in general, 

 and to regard all conduct, both ethical and non-ethical, as adjustments 

 of means to ends ; even this form of the theory must be able to make 

 it plain that the transition from conduct non-ethical to conduct ethical 

 is gradual, composed of many steps, and not, as experience seems to 

 teach, sudden, distinct, and sharp. 



What belief, then, does reason require in our present state of knowl- 

 edge as to the relation between nerve-matter and consciousness ? We 

 distinguish two series, two kinds of experiences ; these stand to one 

 another as outward and inward, physical and spiritual, compound and 

 simple. We do not know the nature of either. The terms matter and 

 soul are our highest generalizations from experience. The materialist 

 errs when he pronounces upon the character of matter, affirming that 



