Chap. III.] MORAL SENSE. 99 



of the transmission of superstitious customs or senseless 

 habits. 



Finally, the social instincts which no doubt were ac- 

 quired by man, as by the lower animals, for the good of 

 the community, will from the first have given to him 

 some wish to aid his fellows, and some feeling of sym- 

 pathy. Such impulses will have served him at a very 

 early period as a rude rule of right and wrong. But as 

 man gradually advanced in intellectual power and was 

 enabled to trace the more remote consequences of his ac- 

 tions ; as he acquired sufficient knowledge to reject bane- 

 ful customs and superstitions; as he regarded more and 

 more not only the welfare but the happiness of his fellow- 

 men ; as from habit, following on beneficial experience, 

 instruction, and example, his sympathies became more 

 tender and widely diffused, so as to extend to the men 

 of all races, to the imbecile, the maimed, and other use- 

 less members of society, and finally to the lower ani- 

 mals — so would the standard of his morality rise higher 

 and higher. And it is admitted by moralists of the de- 

 rivative school and by some intuitionists, that the stand- 

 ard of morality has risen since an early period in the his- 

 tory of man. 37 



As a struggle may sometimes be seen going on between 

 the various instincts of the lower animals, it is not sur- 

 prising that there should be a struggle in man between 

 his social instincts, with their derived virtues, and his 

 lower, though, at the moment, stronger impulses or desires. 

 This, as Mr. Galton 38 has remarked, is all the less sur- 



31 A writer in the 'Xorth British Review ' (July, 1869, p. 531), well 

 capable of forming a sound judgment, expresses himself strongly to this 

 effect. Mr. Lecky (' Hist, of Morals,' vol. i. p. 143) seems to a certain 

 extent to coincide. 



** See his remarkable work on ' Hereditary Genius,' 1869, p. 349. 



