THE PLACE OF CONSCIENCE IN EVOLUTION. 519 



and must exist independently of all theories as to what in the abstract 

 constitutes right and wrong, and in spite of mistakes in particular cases. 



Lastly, conscience is imperative, because the inwrought conscious- 

 ness in human nature that man has a right to himself makes every other 

 consideration whatsoever subordinate to itself. This is the right which 

 must be at every cost pursued by myself and conceded to me by others, 

 which dominates every action, lies at the root of all human progress, 

 shapes every institution of our devising, and presides over the destiny 

 of mankind to its remotest end. For, travel as far as we please, we can 

 never escape from the conditions under which we were called into being. 



So far, then, the task we set before us of ascertaining how the sense 

 of rightness came into the world has been in some degree accomplished. 

 The process by which from this prolific germ the vast fabric of human 

 morality, together with the exquisitely delicate machinery of the indi- 

 vidual conscience, as we now see it, has by slow degrees grown up, can 

 be indicated in a sentence. Morality consists in transferring to other 

 beings like ourselves those rights which we feel that we ourselves pos- 

 sess, in learning that what is due to us from them is also due to them 

 from us, in ascertaining in what those mutual rights consist, in adjust- 

 ing the rights of individuals within the limits of one society, lastly, in 

 forming to ourselves notions of abstract right and wrong by the meth- 

 ods of philosophical inquiry. Manifestly, therefore, this account of the 

 origin of conscience does not conflict with any one proposition that has 

 ever been formulated by any of the great masters of experimental phi- 

 losophy ; it does but claim to add to them that undefinable something 

 which seemed to the common-sense of mankind deficient in their account 

 of conscience. The true method of inquiry is surely not to ask what 

 such words as "conscience," "ought," "duty," "happiness," mean in 

 the mind of a modern thinker, but to discover, if we can, what they 

 meant, or rather to what instinctive impressions they corresponded, in 

 the minds of the forefathers of our race. For the question is not " How 

 did I come by my conscience ? " but " How did those remote ancestors 

 of mine, the first man and after him the first society of men, come by 

 theirs ? " 



The history of the process by which, under the influence of social 

 life, its wants, obligations, utilities, arrangements, and sanctions, the 

 sense of a right due to ourselves was elaborated into the voice of con- 

 science prescribing what is due to others, would be a valuable and in- 

 teresting contribution to moral science. But though quite beyond our 

 present limits it is, I think, possible to sketch in mere outline the stages 

 through which conscience passed till it reached its full growth. I dis- 

 claim any pedantic desire to show that these stages are chronologically 

 successive ; on the contrary, they act and react upon each other, and 

 may be immensely varied in their operations among different races or 

 at different times. But with this proviso the seven ages of conscience 

 may be briefly indicated as follows : 



