HQ LESSONS FROM NATURE. [CHAP. V. 



In concluding what I have to say relative to Mr. Darwin s 

 conception and explanation of the moral sense (namely, that 

 its first foundation and origin lies in the social instincts, 

 including sympathy, themselves gained primarily through 

 natural selection),* I may quote some observations made 

 Mr Hutton.t He says that, supposing the moral nature of man 

 to have been simply evolved from brutes, the moral nature 

 must, then, be wholly determined by the physical agencies m 

 which it is reared. And to suppose that they could give a 

 power of self-determination of which they are not themselves 

 possessed, or issue in a sense of obligation, when they are a 

 mere bundle of helpless forces, is to suppose nature at once 

 free and servile, vigilant and asleep.&quot; 



The notions that the distinct, deliberate, reflective, repre 

 sentative powers of the mind are essentially the same as the 

 mere indeliberate, presentative faculties ; and that the gre 

 garious instincts of a brute are fundamentally one with our 

 moral intuitions, is open to another of Mr. Button s excel 

 lent remarks (vol. i. p. 47) : &quot; Nothing is less scientific than 

 any hypothesis which tries to run one set of facts into another 

 without justification, in order to evade the admission of a 

 distinct root. Instead of increasing our means of representing 

 the universe, such a procedure confines and disturbs them,&quot; 

 and &quot; the problem of all atheistic philosophers has been, not 

 to find the real ultimate link between the different classes of 

 natural force and life, but to soften away as much as possible 

 the one into the other, so as to make the transition imper 

 ceptible, and so introduce a thoroughly new creative force, as 

 if it were but an expansion of that beneath it &quot; (p. 51). 



It would not be impossible, however, to modify this ex 

 pression of Mr. Darwin s views, so as to make them harmonise 

 with our ethical perceptions. If he were to say that a moral 

 First Cause had so ordered events that the right and the 

 expedient in the main coincide, and thus virtue and happi- 



- . 



Descent of Man, vol. ii. p. 394. 

 f Essays, vol. i. p. 43. 



