Sheldon — The lAterature of Ethical Science. 1 33 



"To make my position fully understood, it seems needful to add that, 

 corresponding to the fundamental propositions of a developed Moral 

 Science, there have been, and still are, developing in the rtice, certain fun- 

 damental intuitions; and that, though these moral intuitions are the re- 

 sults of accumulated experiences of Utility, gradually organized and 

 inherited, they have come to be quite independent of conscious experience. 

 Just in the same way that I believe the intuition of space, possessed by any 

 living individual, to have arisen from organized and consolidated experi- 

 ences of all antecedent individuals who bequeathed to him their slowly de- 

 veloped nervous organizations — just as I believe that this intuition, 

 requiring only to be made dehnlte and complete by personal experiences, 

 has practically become a form of thought, apparently quite independent of 

 experience; so do I believe that the experiences of utility organized and 

 consolidated through all past generations of the human race, have been pro- 

 ducing corresponding nervous modifications, which, by continued trans- 

 mission 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. I also hold 

 that ]ust as the space-intuition responds to the exact dtrraouscratious of 

 Geometry, and has its rough conclusions interpreted and verified by them; 

 so will moral intuitions respond to the demonstrations of Moral Science, 

 and will have their rough conclusions interpreted and verified by them." — 

 " The Data of Ethics," by Herbert Spencer. 



'* I am very far from denying that the materials of the human constitution 

 existed in lower orders. But iu man the materials are differently com- 

 pounded. As the combination of the same chemical elements at different 

 potencies gives essentially different products, so the combination of the 

 same materials gave different creatures. Inquiry concerning the origin of 

 the sense of obligation is simply inquiry concerning the origin of man. 

 Duty was not merely an advantage, a utility which man adopted after he had 

 been man for a longer or shorter time. Without it man would not be man. 

 It is his nature." — '' Moral Evolution," by George Harris, 



•' Es bedarf dazu vielmehr der Mitwirkung einer seelischen Einheit, fiir 

 welche die Vorstellung nur die Veranlassung ist, in einer bestimmten 

 Weise, namlich durch Erzeugung eines sittlichen Urteils, besser des 

 sittlicheu Gefiihls, zu reagiren. Dass es aber gerade immer diese Form der 

 Reaction ist, kann nur aus einer urspriinglichen Anlage der Seele erklSrt 

 werden. So wenig das Fallgesetz des Steins, der aus der Ruhelage in die 

 Fallbewegung iibergeht, eine von der nahen Erdmasse unabhiingige Formel 

 des Geschehens ausdriickt, so wenig konnen sich seelische Vorgauge nach 

 Gesetzen aneinander kniipfen, die nicht durch eine entsprechende der Seele 

 eigene Anlage bestimmt waren." — " Wesen und Entstehung des Ge- 

 wissens," by Theodor Elsenhans. 



"What we term immorality, sin, crime, wickedness, etc., may be scien- 

 tifically regarded as moral pathology or functional mental disease in social 

 subjects; and we may view moral diseases as being merely cerebral and 



