Chap. III. MORAL SENSE. 103 



sessing such virtues, having succeeded best in the 

 struggle for life. My chief source of doubt with respect 

 to any such inheritance, is that senseless customs, super- 

 stitions, and tastes, such as the horror of a Hindoo for 

 unclean food, ought on the same principle to be trans- 

 mitted. Although this in itself is perhaps not less pro- 

 bable than that animals should acquire inherited tastes 

 for certain kinds of food or fear of certain foes, I have 

 not met with any evidence in support of the trans- 

 mission of superstitious customs or senseless habits. 



Finally, the social instincts which no doubt were 

 acquired 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 

 actions; as he acquired sufficient knowledge to reject 

 baneful customs and superstitions ; as he regarded 

 more and more not only the welfare but the happi- 

 ness 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 im- 

 becile, the maimed, and other useless members of 

 society, and finally to the lower animals, — so would the 

 standard of his morality rise higher and higher. And 

 it is admitted by moralists of the derivative school and 

 by some intuitionists, that the standard of morality has 

 risen since an early period in the history of man. 37 



As a struggle may sometimes be seen going on 



37 A writer in the 'North British Keview' (July, 1869, p. 531), well 

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



