Morals as a Factor in Organic Evolution 657 



moral surroundings, is proof that morality of any definite 

 grade, and the resulting conscience associated with it, are an 

 acquired and educational act largely. But the view that the 

 moral tendencies have wholly to be acquired must be con- 

 siderably qualified in connection with the evident tendency 

 that all cognitic and cogitic cell substances have of becoming 

 polar to, or more readily traversed by, certain lines of energy 

 that have passed through them during successive generations 

 of species or races. This seems to be the main and a sufficient 

 reason why children of the more refined white and some yellow 

 races are more readily and fully capable of moral education 

 than are those of a black or red nation. 



In line therefore with Herbert Spencer's conception of en- 

 ergy-distribution, w^ith Cope's principle of Kinetogenesis, and 

 with the fundamental thesis of this volume, moral tendencies 

 become steadily fixed in the organization of the organism, if 

 these be renewed and long continued in their renewal. 



But, when we investigate comparatively the "moral" acts 

 of man alongside those of some groups of animals, we discover 

 that many of the latter equally develop moral sentiments. 

 These animals moreover develop such qualities very nearly 

 in the ratio of brain organization that has already been pointed 

 out in this work. Thus bees and ants unquestionably show 

 a high moral organization as compared with rabbits, sheep, 

 or even squirrels. The dog and elephant again amongst mam- 

 mals show such to a much greater degree than do the wolf, 

 the baboon, or even the lemur. 



Lauder-Lindsay has, to the writer's thinking, more exactly 

 and vividly condensed our knowledge and expressed the situa- 

 tion than any other writer. After enumerating the leading 

 moral qualities under twelve heads he adds: "There is not 

 one of these moral qualities that is not possessed, sometimes 

 in a high degree, by certain of the lower animals, and more 

 especially the dog; and there are many authors who have been 

 desirous of drawing marked psychical distinctions between 

 man and other animals, who have nevertheless felt themselves 

 compelled by the evidence of facts to concede to these other 



