THE PLACE OF CONSCIENCE IN EVOLUTION. 517 



came self-conscious was confined to these two spheres of action, flying 

 (by combination and otherwise) for life and killing for* life. There 

 were creatures whom it was natural for him to kill, and others who, it 

 was equally natural, should kill him. This was the state of things in 

 which he found himself a living, thinking being; this was the law 

 which he found not only confronting him on every side of his exterior 

 life, but also deep rooted in his inmost nature as an indubitable, un- 

 answerable fact. 



Having arrived at this point, let us as our next step remind our- 

 selves that it is impossible to imagine a rational human being in whom 

 there is not present the assurance that he has a right to himself, to be 

 allowed to live in the first place, afterward (as the result maybe of 

 long years of evolution) to be allowed to live happily. That no one 

 has a right to take my life from me is a thought inseparable from my- 

 self, it is at any rate the first piece of knowledge of which I become 

 possessed. The infant's cry for nourishment and warmth contains this 

 much meaning to those who can discern how moral feelings grew out 

 of physical conditions. But then this thought remains a mere mystery, 

 and therefore quite unsuitable for affording a basis on which to explain 

 the origin of conscience, until we set it in the light of evolution. So 

 regarded, the mystery vanishes in an instant. For this thought is 

 merely the necessary result of the correlation of the first self-conscious 

 being with his environment, and conscience is the struggle for existence 

 become aware of itself in the mind of a thinking person. The first 

 man, in however dumb, inarticulate a fashion, did nevertheless prac- 

 tically contrive to claim of the universe, of Nature, of creatures like 

 himself, nay, ultimately of the unknown Author of all things, that thej 7 

 should not destroy the life which they had originated. He made his 

 appeal (makes it in truth now) to all the tremendous forces amid which 

 he moved, and in the balance and play of which he endeavored to main- 

 tain an independent personal existence, that they should minister to 

 Mm, the one thinking creature among them, and therefore (for the first 

 man was also the first philosopher) their centre and final cause. It 

 seemed to him, in short, right, could not indeed seem otherwise, the 

 past being what it had been, that his environment should be such as 

 would make life possible to him at once, and in due time useful and 

 enjoyable. , 



Observe that the condition essential to all knowledge, namely, con- 

 trast or the perception of dissimilarities, is here present. As light is 

 meaningless without darkness, or heat without cold, so is right without 

 its contrast of force or wrong. No doubt primeval man may have for 

 long perceived by sensation the contrast of heat and cold, day and 

 night, before he so far separated the ideas as to give them abstract 

 names. So, too, the same man may have for long felt the indescribable 

 contrast between the external force that was everywhere threatening 

 his existence and the internal force that was resolutely bent on con- 



