152 ETHICAL ASPECTS OF EVOLUTION 



of consciousness begin when the mind, reflecting on its 

 own movements, takes notice of those reactions. Its first 

 step is to classify the acts by which they are excited. It 

 recognizes that certain classes of action exercise an attractive 

 and others a repellent influence ; that murder and cruelty 

 repel, while kindness and self-denial attract. Instead of 

 the primitive judgements, this act is bad and that act good, 

 we arrive at the general judgements, murder is bad and 

 kindness is good. For a second step, it discovers that 

 certain impulses or certain intentions usually produce 

 certain classes of act, and the feeling excited by the act 

 itself comes to be transferred to the intention. We then 

 talk of bad or good intentions, or, more generally still, of 

 good or bad wills, or characters, or men. 



Observation in the individuals with whom we are brought 

 into practical relations, of similar processes and similar 

 classifications of acts or intentions, leads to the construction 

 of a more or less definite and comprehensive code of moral 

 law, which, with some looseness of expression, has been 

 termed the common or tribal conscience, or the common 

 sense. This, not being reduced to writing, has no existence 

 as an independent entity. It is merely an acquired segment 

 of the consciousness of each individual, which corresponds 

 in all the individuals who share it much more closely than 

 their inherited consciences do. Instead of affecting action 

 immediately, it involves observation of the behaviour of 

 others. It may affect the conduct of the individual in 

 different ways. Either he may remark that, whatever his 

 own conscience may tell him, the great majority of his 

 neighbours approve or disapprove of this or that course of 

 action, and that, if he wishes to retain their good opinion, 

 his own action must conform. In that case the command 

 itself will be strictly ethical, but the compliance will be 

 prudential. Or the operation may be unconscious ; his in 

 herited character may be moulded insensibly by the opinions 

 he is in the habit of hearing. Or, finally, a maxim may com 

 mand his assent at once, as soon as he is made aware of it. 

 In both these cases his conduct remains purely ethical. 



