98 Trans. Acad. Sci. of St. Louis. 



Along with this went the allied error that this same organ 

 of the soul announced categorical judgments as to what was 

 right and wrong on any or every life problem. The child was 

 told: Look to your conscience, it is the voice of God. But 

 now we no longer really have to argue this question at all. 

 Another allied science has practically wiped that old theory 

 out of existence; and that is the science of anthropology. 

 It is this other science which has been laying the axe at the 

 root of the tree and shaking the old foundations. The work 

 has gone so far that I am bound to say one begins to tremble 

 a little with anxiety as to what is to be the outcome. And the 

 question is actually considered as to whether the soul as 

 such necessarily functions in the form of conscience. The 

 problem is now debated as to whether those feelings we think 

 of as moral, are universal, — whether they have always 

 existed in the human being. It is being asserted boldly 

 that they are simply a transient phase in the evolution of 

 consciousness. 



On the positive side, another great result has been accom- 

 plished in the development of the historical side in the study 

 of conscience. It is here where the fruits have been the 

 greatest, and where, perhaps, the hardest work has been 

 done. This, too, must be regarded as a contribution from the 

 doctrine of evolution. If conscience is not an organ of the 

 soul, but only a phase of the soul's functioning, then 

 came the fascinating problem to work out the steps or pro- 

 cesses according to which this functioning has displayed 

 itself in the history of the human race. The absorbing 

 problem, therefore, at the present time in ethical science is 

 not so much the nature of conscience or the nature of the 

 ethical ideal in itself; but the story of the development here» 

 the chapters of growth in the ethical ideal or in the appear- 

 ance of the moral sense we call conscience. 



It has been established here now at last beyond dispute 

 I should say, that growth or evolution applies in this direction 

 just as much as it does in the bodily organism or in the 

 animal kingdom. There is the same problem here as in 

 biology. The question of origin, you understand, is some- 



