156 ETHICAL ASPECTS OF EVOLUTION 



noticed. If we look round on the circle of our acquaintances, 

 we shall find some in whom it is entirely dead with regard 

 to some classes of acts, which, in the majority of mankind, 

 create a lively reaction, and only a few (among whom 

 it would be rash to include ourselves) in whom, on some 

 points at least, it is not so dull as to be indifferent to 

 obvious duties unless its attention is expressly attracted 

 to them. A code of conduct, based on the moral reactions 

 of any single person, would have no claim to complete 

 ness, or to authority over all the individual members of 

 a community. 



The chief distinctions between subjective or individual 

 and objective or social morality are, briefly, these. The 

 first is dependent on the conscience of each individual ; the 

 exciting causes are the ideas of acts committed by the 

 individual himself ; the sanctions, remorse or peace of 

 mind, and moral progress or deterioration. The second 

 depends on general principles accepted by the community 

 at large ; its exciting causes are usually motives and not 

 acts, and its reference is to our neighbours rather than to 

 ourselves ; its sanctions are praise and blame, and all the 

 consequences that flow from social esteem or disgrace. It 

 is fuller, and usually rather more elevated, and it admits 

 of being codified and reduced to a system, which the other 

 does not. The idea of responsibility has its origin in the 

 development of the social conscience, and it rarely, if ever, 

 and then by a transfer from the later product, finds a place 

 in the judgements which an individual passes on his own 

 actions. That it could not have been helped is only a meagre 

 consolation for an action which we deplore, when it has 

 been committed by ourselves. In the judgements of the 

 social conscience it forms an indispensable element. 



We may now consider what is meant by the primacy of 

 the conscience, and with what restrictions and conditions 

 the phrase may be accepted as expressing a truth. Primacy 

 implies competition, and the competitors with the individual 

 conscience for the guidance of action may be either motives 

 of an entirely distinct origin, or the objective principles 



