ETHICS AND THE DEVELOPMENT THEORY. 369 



moral nature. Moral progress consists, not in men coming nearer to 

 their ideals, but in their ideals reaching a higher plane. 



This theory shows us how dependent man is upon his race, and 

 how erroneous it is to separate him from that connection. That the 

 faculty of conscience is a result of the adaptation of man to the con- 

 ditions of social existence appears to he doubted by no adherent of the 

 theory of development ; but the exponents of the doctrine vary greatly 

 in their views of the manner in which the moral conceptions arise in 

 individual life. Some regard them as to a greater or less extent in- 

 stinctive, or transmitted by inheritance from the accumulated experi- 

 ence of ancestors ; while others are inclined to accord a more promi- 

 nent agency in the matter to training. We may apparently, however, 

 presume that that which is practically the most wholesome will endure 

 in the character, provided the teacher does not trust too much to the 

 innate moral instincts, but recognizes that, while his child has the 

 qualities requisite to his becoming a moral man under favorable con- 

 ditions, this is not sure to be the case if those conditions are wanting, 

 and therefore exercises extreme care in moral instruction. 



"We turn next to the answer to the question, What is the bearing 

 of the development theory on the practical part of ethics? Man's 

 place in Nature, as determined by that theory, is very different from 

 that indicated in the older ideas of men ; just as the Nature in which 

 man finds himself set is not the Nature that existed in the conceptions 

 of the past. The new conception of man and his morals again ap- 

 proaches, in many respects, that which was implied in the ethics of 

 classical antiquity. Man no longer stands outside of Nature, but within 

 it, as one of its integral parts. He is subject to the same laws of life 

 as the animals. All in him, like all around him, is a product of natural, 

 regular development. Even his moral part is not something laid upon 

 him from outside of Nature, but something which has been shaped 

 out of his own nature, molding itself according to the conditions of 

 his existence. To an ethicist who accepts this view, morals will ap- 

 pear an affair of humanity and for humanity for humanity on earth ; 

 and will give the most comprehensive construction of the saying of 

 Christ, that man is not made for the Sabbath, but the Sabbath for 

 man. We can not perceive that this view involves any practically 

 destructive tendencies ; and there are not a few distinguished men 

 who avow the belief that there is no irreconcilable variance between 

 evolution and religion. 



With this view of the place of man in Nature, the ethicist can not 

 easily oppose the doctrine that the same legality rules in the human 

 will as in all the other processes of Nature. Even in the matter of the 

 appearance of new individuals, the development theory admits no void 

 in the endless chain of causation ; for the dispositions which man 

 brings into the world are, in consequence of it, nothing else than a 

 product of the energies of his predecessors. The recognition of the 



TOL. XXVII. 24 



