110 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION 



duties. Such a condition appears universal in all 

 savage tribes, for there is none that does not show 

 this sense of obedience to authority to some extent. 

 Whether there is always any sense of moral obliga- 

 tion connected with it is not by any means sure, and 

 very likely at the outset such a feeling is founded 

 upon love, pride, fear, and coercion. But although 

 obedience may have at first been thus produced, just 

 as soon as it became imperative and binding it would 

 in a measure change its nature. The sense of coer- 

 cion would become a sense of duty. Out of the must 

 would come the ought — two feelings which were 

 probably at first indistinguishable in the race, as 

 they certainly are indistinguishable in the mind of 

 the growing child. 



Origin of Conscience. — Such a force could not raise 

 the individual above the average of his race. It 

 would lead him to imitate others, and to follow the 

 dictates of general opinion or the command of a 

 superior, but his private conscience could not rise 

 above public custom. Now the very essence of con- 

 science is that it may act independently of public 

 opinion, and demands obedience not infrequently in 

 direct opposition to the customs of the race. If the 

 sense of duty which arises from coercion, fear, love, 

 or sympathy cannot rise above average opinion, 

 something more is evidently needed to explain the 

 moral sense in its higher forms. We may under- 

 stand, from what has gone before, the origin of tribal 

 customs and a sense of obligation to obey law; but 

 how arose that conscience which impels one to stand 

 against the opinions of the race, to resist law in favor 

 of what he thinks to be right, even at the expense of 

 suffering, and which, in short, fills us with the belief 



