Morals as a Factor in Organic Evolution 655 



like Spartans, holding theft a virtue; who lie like Trojans, 

 without a vestige of appreciation for truth; and who hold 

 the treacherous and cowardly murder of a sleeping guest 

 the height of human honor" (49: 173). The testimony of 

 many other travelers is unanimous, that amongst most savage 

 races conscience is non-existent, and morals — that in their 

 summation-resultant represent conscience — are an irregular 

 and uncertain quantity. Equally clear is it, and now rec- 

 ognized by all sound moralists, psychologists, and philosophers, 

 that advancing or evolving conscience, in its mental bulk or 

 development, follows and is the outcome of advancing morals. 

 Morals therefore, like all other organic phenomena, have evi- 

 dently had a slow, gradual, and advancing evolutionary his- 

 tory, every step of which it may be difficult to piece together, 

 but some of the phases of which may be sufficiently complete 

 to enable the evolutionary moral historian to connect all at 

 some future day. 



Accordingly Lauder-Lindsay very accurately sums up the 

 situation, from his wide experience as a traveler, a student, 

 a medical man, an alienist, and a humanitarian. "Darwin 

 dwells on the differences of opinion that exist as to whether 

 the moral sense is instinctive or acquired. Bain, Mill, Maud- 

 sley, and others have pointed out its acquired nature. It 

 is, in truth, produced or developed in man by culture; it decays 

 or disappears with age; it is perverted or destroyed by dis- 

 ease. It is certainly not innate in primitive man, in the civ- 

 ilized child or in the idiot. In none of these cases does it at 

 first or mider natural and normal conditions exist, while in 

 some it cannot be developed by any degree or kind of culture" 

 (49, I: 173). Featherman also expresses the situation well 

 when he says: "Moral principles are the natural outgrowth 

 of human society, for without society moral laws could never 

 have been originated; and these principles are not absolute, 

 for they are developed in accordance with the higher or lower 

 degree of civilization of every political body which is capable 

 of controlling the acts of the aggregate mass ... of its 

 members, and partly also of the individuals of which the mass 



