700 THE DESCENT OF MAX. 



advance of morality. Ultimately man does not accept tho 

 praise or blame of his fellows as his sole guide, though 

 few escape this influence, but his habitual convictions, con- 

 trolled by reason, afford him the safest rule. His con- 

 science then becomes the supreme judge and monitor. 

 Nevertheless, the first foundation or origin of the moral sense 

 lies in the social instincts, including sympathy; and these 

 instincts no doubt were primarily gained, as in the case of 

 the lower animals, through natural selection. 



The belief in God has often been advanced as not only 

 the greatest but the most complete of all the distinctions 

 between man and the lower animals. It is, however, im- 

 possible, as we have seen, to maintain that this belief is 

 innate or instinctive in man. On the other hand, a belief 

 in all-pervading spiritual agencies seems to be universal; 

 and apparently follows from a considerable advance in 

 man's reason, and from a still greater advance in his 

 faculties of imagination, curiosity and wonder. I am 

 aware that the assumed instinctive belief in God has been 

 used by many persons as an argument for His existence. 

 But this is a rash argument, as we should thus be compelled 

 to believe in the existence of many cruel and malignant 

 spirits, only a little more powerful than man; for the 

 belief in them is far more general than in a beneficient Deity. 

 The idea of a universal and beneficient Creator does not 

 seem to arise in the mind of man until he has been elevated 

 by long-continued culture. 



He who believes in the advancement of man from some 

 low organized form will naturally ask, How does this bear 

 on the belief in the immortality of the soul ? The barbar- 

 ous races of man, as Sir J t Lubbock has shown, possess no 

 clear belief of this kind ; but arguments derived from the 

 primeval beliefs of savages are, as we have just seen, of 

 little or no avail. Few persons feel any anxiety from the 

 impossibility of determining at what precise period in the 

 development of the individual, from the first trace of a 

 minute germinal vesicle, man becomes an immortal being; 

 and there is no greater cause for anxiety because the 

 period cannot possibly be determined in the gradually 

 ascending organic scale.* 



*Tbe Kev. J. A. Picton ives a discussion to this effect in his 

 " New Theories and the Old Faith," 1870. 



