132 ETHICAL ASPECTS OF EVOLUTION 



agency to which the action stands in the relation of effect. 

 They vary in their contents from man to man, and from age 

 to age. Their only rewards and penalties are satisfaction 

 and remorse, both of them as purely subjective as the 

 commands themselves. In all these respects they differ 

 from the commands of a revealed religion. Those proceed 

 from an external source, and are purely objective. They are 

 not immediately given to the consciousness, but imply 

 a reference to a supernatural revelation. They are the 

 same for all men and for all time, so long as the religion 

 itself endures. Their rewards and punishments proceed 

 from an external Power, and are varied at His discretion. 

 The causal principle throughout is the Creator. It is He who 

 enacts the law and enforces it. The law of religion must be 

 spread abroad by missionaries, and declared day by day from 

 the pulpit ; the voice of conscience requires neither apostle 

 nor priest. It is true that the conscience may, and usually 

 does, coincide with religion, and, as a general principle, it 

 may make the observance of the divine law one of its leading 

 interests. Under those conditions the infractions of the 

 divine law will be visited by the accumulated penalties 

 of the conscience and religion ; but the two principles can, 

 even then, be easily distinguished, and their coincidence 

 is far from being necessary or universal. As an example 

 of the peremptory character of the moral commands and 

 their attribution to the voice of God, the noble saying of 

 Milton may be quoted: 



The choice lay before me between the dereliction of a 

 supreme duty and the loss of eyesight ; in such a case I 

 could not listen to the physician, not if Esculapius him 

 self had spoken from his sanctuary. I could not but obey 

 that inward monitor, I knew not what, that spoke to me 

 from Heaven. 



We have seen that the conscience is dependent for its 

 manifestation on the idea of an act resulting from some other 

 impulse which is distinct from it, and the view has sometimes 

 been expressed that its effect is invariably inhibitive. This 

 appears to be the meaning of Dante s lines : 



