MORAL SENSE, 141 



evidence in support of the transmission of superstitious 

 customs or senseless habits, although in itself it is per- 

 haps not less probable than that animals should acquire 

 inherited tastes for certain kinds of food or fear of certain 

 foes. 



Finally the social instincts, which no doubt were acquired 

 by man as by the lower animals for the good of the com- 

 munity, will from the first have given to him some wish to 

 aid his fellows, some feeling of sympathy, and have com- 

 pelled, him to regard their approbation and disapprobation. 

 Such impulses will have served him at a very early period 

 as a rude rule of right and wrong. But as man gradually 

 advanced in intellectual power and was enabled to trace the 

 more remote consequences of his actions; as he acquired 

 sufficient knowledge to reject baneful customs and super- 

 stitions; as he regarded more and more not only the wel- 

 fare, but the happiness of his fellow-men; as from habit, 

 following on beneficial experience, instruction and example, 

 his sympathies became more tender and widely diifused, 

 extending to men of all races, to the imbecile, maimed, and 

 other useless members of society, and finally to the lower 

 animals so would the standard of his morality rise higher 

 and higher. And it is admitted by moralists of the deriva- 

 tive school and by some intuitionists, that the standard of 

 morality has risen since an early period in the history of 

 man. * 



As a struggle may sometimes be seen going on between j 

 the various instincts of the lower animals, it is not surpris- I 

 ing that there should be a struggle in man between his I 

 social instincts, with their derived virtues, and his lower, I 

 though momentarily stronger impulses or desires. This, as \ 

 Mr. Graltonf has remarked, is all the less surprising, as man 

 has emerged from a state of barbarism within a compara- 

 tively recent period. After having yielded to some temp- 

 tation we feel a sense of dissatisfaction, shame, repentance, 



* A writer in the " North British Review " (July 1869, p. 531), 

 well capable of forming a sound judgment, expresses himself strongly 

 in favor of this conclusion. Mr. Lecky (' Hist, of Morals," vol. i, p. 

 143) seems to a certain extent to coincide therein. 



f See his remarkable work on "Hereditary Genius," 1869, p. 349. 

 The Duke of Argyll (" Primeval Man," 1869, p. 188) has some good 

 remarks on the contest in nan's nature between right and wrong. 



