Chap. IV. . Moral Sense. 123 



cr habits, experience unfortunately shews us how long it is, 

 before we look at them as our fellow-creatures. Sympathy 

 beyond the confines of man, that is, humanity to the lower 

 animals, seems to be one of the latest moral acquisitions. It is 

 apparently unfelt by savages, except towards their pets. How 

 little the old Eomans knew of it is shewn by their abhorrent 

 gladiatorial exhibitions. The very idea of humanity, as far as I 

 could observe, was new to most of the Gauchos of the Pampas. 

 This virtue, one of the noblest with which man is endowed, 

 seems to arise incidentally from our sympathies becoming more 

 tender and more widely diffused, until they are extended to all 

 sentient beings. As soon as this virtue is honoured and practised 

 by some few men, it spreads through instruction and example 

 to the young, and eventually becomes incorporated in public 

 opinion . 



The highest possible stage in moral culture is when we re- 

 cognise that we ought to control our thoughts, and " not even in 

 " inmost thought to think again the sins that made the past so 

 H pleasant to us." 44 Whatever makes any bad action familiar to 

 the mind, renders its performance by so much the easier. As 

 Marcus Aurelius long ago said, "Such as arc thy habitual 

 " thoughts, such also will be the character of thy mind ; for the 

 " soul is dyed by the thoughts." 45 



Our great philosopher, Herbert Spencer, has recently explained 

 his views on the moral sense. He says, 46 " I believe that the 

 " experiences of utility organised and consolidated through all 

 "past generations of the human race, have been • producing 

 " corresponding modifications, which, by continued transmission 

 " and accumulation, have become in us certain faculties of 

 " moral intuition — certain emotions responding to right and 

 " wrong conduct, which have no apparent basis in the individual 

 " experiences of utility." There is not the least inherent 

 improbability, as it seems to me, in virtuous tendencies being 

 more or less strongly inherited ; for, not to mention the various 

 dispositions and habits transmitted by many of our domestic 

 animals to their offspring, I have heard of authentic cases in 

 which a desire to steal and a tendency to lie appeared to run 

 in families of the upper ranks ; and as stealing is a rare crime in 

 the wealthy classes, we can hardly account by accidental coinci- 

 dence for the tendency occurring in tw r o or three members of 



** Tennyson, 'Idylls of the King,' Aurelius was born A.D. 121. 



p. 244. * 6 Letter to Mr. Mill in Rain's 



45 ' The Thoughts of the Emperor ' Mental and Moral Science,' 18(38, 



M. Aurelius Antoninus,' Eng. trans- p. 722. 

 .at., 2nd edit., 1869, p. 112. Marcus 



