68 ETHICAL ASPECTS OF EVOLUTION 



gained, though that is the usual procedure, by putting 

 forward a few only of such as seem to suit the purpose of 

 the argument. At the best, a selection of that kind might 

 serve for illustration, but not for proof. Still, there are 

 some facts which rise above the rest in importance and 

 generality. If a man were asked which were the two qualities 

 which most clearly distinguish him and his kind from other 

 animals, he would probably reply, without much hesitation, 

 his conscience and his intellect, and it is to these he owes 

 both his highest pleasures and his keenest pains. From 

 the first he derives on the one hand the pangs of remorse, 

 occultum quatiente animo tortore flagellum ; and on the 

 other, the supreme happiness, surpassing in value all 

 pleasures, which is the reward for pleasures renounced at 

 the call of duty. The pleasures and the pains of the intellect 

 are more various and more difficult to reduce to a broad 

 classification. The attainment, and, still more perhaps, 

 the pursuit of truth, seem to offer nothing but pleasure. 

 Let him that is melancholy (I quote Burton) demon 

 strate a proposition in Euclid, in his five last books, extract 

 a square root, or study Algebra ; than which, as Clavius 

 holds, in all human disciplines, nothing can be more excellent 

 or pleasant, so abstruse or recondite, so bewitching, so 

 miraculous, so ravishing, so easy withal, and full of delight. 

 Omnem humanum cap turn superare videtur. 1 Even this, 

 however, if it brings with it no positive pain, is only reached 

 by the renunciation of nearly every other pleasure, and it 

 is often conditioned by the nervous irritability which has 

 been remarked on in our quotation from Mr. Spencer. 

 The comparison, in the case of the feelings which spring 

 from our power of remembering the past and imagining 

 the future, is more simple and direct. Only men know the 

 dreams of the lover and the dread of extinction ; the luxury 

 of recalling sufferings that have been left behind, or the 

 bitterness to the miserable of the memory of happier days. 

 The temptation to continue the list of illustrations is 

 strong, but enough has been advanced to show that it would 

 1 Anatomy, ii. 2, 4. 



