6i2 The Descent of Man. Part 111 



every human being. No doubt a man with a torpid mind, if his 

 social affections and sympathies are well developed, will be led 

 to good actions, and may have a fairly sensitive conscience. But 

 whatever renders the imagination more vivid and strengthens 

 the habit of recalling and comparing past impressions, will 

 make the conscience more sensitive, and may even somewhat 

 compensate for weak social affections and sympathies. 



The moral nature of man has reached its present standard, 

 partly through the advancement of his reasoning powers and 

 consequently of a just public opinion, but especially from 

 his sympathies having been rendered more tender and widely 

 diffused through the effects of habit, example, instruction, and 

 reflection. It is not improbable that after long practice virtuous 

 tendencies may be inherited. With the more civilised races, the 

 conviction of the existence of an all-seeing Deity has bad a 

 potent influence on the advance of morality. Ultimately man 

 does not accept the praise or blame of his fellows as his sole 

 guide, though few escape this influence, but his habitual 

 convictions, controlled by reason, afford him the safest rule. 

 His conscience then becomes the supreme judge and monitor. 

 Nevertheless the first foundation or origin of the moral sense 

 lies in the social instincts, including sympathy; and these 

 instincts no doubt were primarily gained, as in the case of the 

 lower animals, through natural selection. 



The belief in God has often been advanced as not only the 

 greatest, but the most complete of all the distinctions between 

 man and the lower animals. It is however impossible, as we 

 have seen, to maintain that this belief is innate or instinctive in 

 man. On the other hand a belief in all-pervading spiritual 

 agencies seems to be universal ; and apparently follows from a 

 considerable advance in man's reason, and from a still greater 

 advance in his faculties of imagination, curiosity and wonder. I 

 am aware that the assumed instinctive belief in God has been 

 used by many persons as an argument for His existence, 

 this is a rash argument, as we should thus be compelled to 

 believe in the existence of many cruel and malignant spirits, only 

 a little more powerful than man ; for the belief in them is far 

 more general than in a beneficent Deity. The idea of a universal 

 and beneficent Creator does not seem to arise in the mind of man, 

 until he has been elevated by long-continued culture. 



He who believes in the advancement of man from some low 

 organised form, will naturally ask how does this bear on the belief 

 in the immortality of the soul. The barbarous races of man, as 

 Sir J. Lubbock has shewn, possess no clear belief of this kind ; 



