5 20 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



1. The Animal Stage. Mr. Darwin's book has familiarized us with 

 the idea that the moral and mental elements in man's nature, no less 

 than the physical and material, were derived from " irrational creatures 

 by the process of evolution. How far this is capable of being proved 

 in other respects it is not for me to say (whatever I may believe), but 

 I am sure that it is true of that element which seems at first sight most 

 opposed to it the conscience. Making all allowance for the tempta- 

 tion and tendency to read our own thoughts into the minds of animals, 

 and also for the effect upon the animals themselves of man's moral 

 control, it yet remains certain that the materials out of which con- 

 science has been constructed are everywhere discernible, like the rough 

 unhewed stones of a quarry, in animal life and in Nature itself. The 

 mere fact that animals can be taught and made to feel what they ought 

 to do (how can we avoid using the word " ought ? ") settles the ques- 

 tion. But, without relying upon this, is it not evident that the con- 

 trast between the external force that would destroy and the internal 

 power that will live existed long before it became an object of per- 

 ception and reflection in the brain of a reasoning creature ? And this 

 contrast produced such actions as the following flight, combina- 

 tion for defense, appealing looks, cries of remonstrance, self-defense to 

 the last moment of existence. For instance, the sight of an object ac- 

 customed to pre} 7 upon a weaker animal then and there stimulated that 

 animal to immediate flight by putting into motion the appropriate mus- 

 cles and limbs. But the animals with which man is in closest alliance 

 were those whose weakness must certainly have made the necessity 

 of escape a large part of their experience. With this would come a 

 great number of painful and also pleasant emotions. The need of hor- 

 rible exertions, the terror of anticipation, the sense of unavailing wrath, 

 sometimes the ecstasy of deliverance, which must have been so strong 

 in the heart of every hunted animal that turned to bay at last, are seen 

 to border closely upon that instinct of Tightness which so evidently be- 

 longs to our individual inherited experience. It needed but the touch 

 of self-consciousness to make the instinctive feeling pass by a bound 

 into an instinctive thought in the mind of a being that "could look be- 

 fore and after." And whatever difficulty there may be in accounting 

 for the evolution of man lies not in his moral but in his mental growth. 

 How he became conscious of himself we may possibly never be able 

 even to imagine, but that being 1 conscious of himself he was bv mere 

 force of circumstances possessed of the germ of conscience, is a state- 

 ment that presents no difficulty at all. 



2. The Intermediate Stage. What was the moral condition of the 

 " ape-like man ? " He was a creature who had a vivid and intense con- 

 ception of his own right to exist, and no conception whatever as to the 

 rights of other creatures to the same existence. He was the inheritor 

 of conditions and tendencies which wrought in him such thoughts as 

 these : " You shall die before I will ; " "I will use you to please my- 



