DARWIN. 121 



But with the less civilised nations reason often errs, and 

 many bad customs and base superstitions come within 

 the same scope, and consequently are esteemed as high 

 virtues and their breach as heavy crimes." 



The belief in God, the author says, is not innate or in- 

 tuitive in man, but only arises after long culture. As 

 to the bearing of the evolution theory on the immortality 

 of the soul, Darwin thinks few people will find cause for 

 anxiety in the impossibility of determining at what period 

 in the ascending scale man became an immortal being. 

 " The birth, both of the species and of the individual, 

 are equally parts of that grand sequence of events, which 

 our minds refuse to accept as the result of blind chance. 

 The understanding revolts at such a conclusion." 



The bearing of the Darwinian doctrine on some im- 

 portant practical questions for society leads to the remark 

 that, while man scans with scrupulous care the pedigree 

 of his animals, when he comes to his own marriage he 

 rarely or never takes any such care. Perhaps Darwin 

 was somewhat in error here ; and, also, he seems to have 

 underrated the unconscious tendency to act according to 

 natural law, which has no doubt influenced mankind 

 largely. He lays down the principle that both sexes 

 ought to refrain from marriage if markedly inferior in 

 body or mind, or if they cannot avoid abject poverty 

 for their children. When the laws of inheritance are 

 thoroughly known, he says, we shall not hear ignorant 

 members of our legislature rejecting with scorn a plan 

 for ascertaining, by an easy method, whether or not con- 

 sanguineous marriages are injurious to man. But Darwin 

 is by no means in favour of any restriction on man's 



