Darwin s Ethical Theory. 177 



a progress to higher phases, the best of which 

 natural selection is constantly preserving. But 

 in the moral world he finds no such common 

 starting-point. He does not pretend that the 

 phenomena of conscience, like those of life and 

 mind, are alike exhibited by man and brute. 

 Had he done so, he might here, too, have con 

 tented himself with the assertion of a develop 

 ment from the one to the other by means of 

 natural selection, leaving the essence of the pro 

 cess as mysterious as he left it in the case of 

 life or mind. And to this assertion, were it sup 

 ported by analogous facts, no one could have 

 objected who accepts his theory of the evolu 

 tion of life. The germ, he might have said, 

 however it originated, somehow grows into the 

 various forms of animal conscience, and at last 

 culminates in the conscience of man ; and the 

 distance between the moral sense of the high 

 est animal and the lowest man, he might have 

 repeated, is not greater than that between the 

 lamprey and the dog. Unfortunately, however, \ 

 for the consistency of this scheme, he finds no 

 animal conscience. With the recognition of that 

 blank, one might suppose the author of the theory 

 of natural selection, with his habitual caution, 

 would venture no farther. But the combined in- 

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