Darwin s Ethical Theory. 181 



he in the same way disclaimed any knowledge of 

 the origin and the essence of conscience (whether 

 taking it for a uniquely human endowment or 

 not) his moral philosophy would have had the 

 same scientific character as his mental philosophy. 

 Whether he held that the moral faculty first ap 

 peared in man or germinated in some lower ani 

 mal, his position would be of the nature of a sci 

 entific hypothesis which could be adjudged by 

 the facts. But when, in violation of his own in 

 variable practice elsewhere, he here professes to 

 show us the non -moral material out of which the 

 moral faculty was manufactured, and the very 

 process of its making, we cannot resist the sus 

 picion that he has fallen upon the vain problem 

 of trying, as Lotze put it, to find out how exist 

 ence was made. 



This attempted derivation of the moral faculty 

 by Darwin has, it will now be seen, no connection, 

 either in matter or in method, with that biologi 

 cal science which is often designated Darwinism. 

 &quot;We must distinguish, henceforth, between Dar 

 win the ethical speculator and Darwin the ob 

 server and interpreter of facts in natural history. 

 The lack of this distinction has led to endless con 

 fusion. Naturalists have supposed that Darwin s 

 biology carried with it his theory of conscience, 



