532 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



nature which, before his time, had been traced either to 

 intuitions or to higher commands, or lastly, to utilitarian 

 purposes. Being inherited by the individual through 

 a long line of ancestral growth these moral sentiments 

 are intuitive or innate so far as the individual man is 

 concerned. To him whose memory covers only a portion 

 of his own experience moral precepts appear as com- 

 mands; the combined memory of the race, however, 

 would reveal them to be natural expedients useful for 

 the preservation, multiplication, and improvement of the 

 race. 

 68. This plausible combination of the utilitarian with the 



Combina- 



tarism f and iu " i n fcuitional aspect has made a lasting and deep impres- 

 ^ews^uT* 1 s i n on recent ethical theory, as it has likewise done in 

 the theory of knowledge, giving in both cases a fresh 

 meaning to the a priori or innate principle which plays 

 such an important part, e.g., in Kant's mental and 

 moral philosophy. Whilst the importance given to it 

 through Darwinian speculation both in this country and 

 abroad is undeniable, its value as a philosophical ex- 

 planation has been much exaggerated. As little as 

 Darwin's biological theory gives an account of the 

 genesis of species, being really concerned only with 

 their descent or genealogy, as little does the evolutionist 

 theory of morality give a satisfactory explanation of its 

 origin. This is thrown back into a remote and shadowy 

 past. The older ethical theories which dealt primarily 

 with the moral criterion or with the fundamental dis- 

 tinction of good and evil are superseded by a historical 

 exposition, showing how moral ideas have in course of 

 time been changed and upon what circumstances these 



