Dawviri s Ethical Theory. 199 



Thorough-going reflection, then, will not gener 

 ate remorse in a being that recognizes no differ 

 ence in impulses to action except degrees of dura 

 tion and intensity. The Darwinian hypothetical 

 moral ancestor does feel remorse. He must 

 therefore have already arrived at a perception of 

 the relative worth of competing springs of con 

 duct. What Darwin calls the social impulses this 

 incipient moral agent already recognizes as higher 

 and nobler than what Darwin calls the selfish im 

 pulses. The one has a claim upon him, the other 

 has not. That claim, the mute though awful ap 

 peal of goodness to a free moral agent, he may 

 defy ; but, unless his heart is hardened, that de 

 fiance brings the terrible yet blessed retribution 

 of remorse. How all this is so, why all this is so, 

 we know not. Voltaire s words deserve, in these 

 days of derivative and genetic philosophy, to 

 be written in letters of gold : &quot; &quot;What inconsist 

 ency ! We know not how the earth produces 

 a blade of grass, or how the bones grow in the 

 womb of her who is with child, and yet we would 

 persuade ourselves that we understand the nature 

 and generation of our ideas.&quot; 



Darwin attempts to derive remorse (which he 

 calls &quot;conscience&quot;) from measuring sociability 

 against selfishness in the mind of a non-moral 



