DARWIN ON THE ORIGIN OF CONSCIENCE. 133 



such a size, that many a person living would feel 

 happy to possess one like them. . . . On the whole, 

 we must really acknowledge that all fossil type of 

 a lower human development is absolutely wanting. 

 Indeed, if we take the total of all fossil men that 

 have been found hitherto, and compare them with 

 what the present offers, then we can maintain with 

 certainty, that, amongst the present generation, there 

 is a much larger number of relatively low-type indi- 

 viduals than amongst the fossils hitherto known. . . . 

 As a fact, we must positively acknowledge that there 

 is always a sharp limit between man and the ape. 

 We cannot teach, we cannot designate it as a revelation 

 of science, that man descends from the ape, or from 

 any other animal.'''' (Nature, Dec. 6, 1877, pp. 112, 

 113.) 



2. If you will allow me to affirm that Darwin 

 teaches, at the outset of his discussion of the moral 

 sense, propositions that would undermine the whole 

 doctrine of personal obligation, I shall have said 

 enough to make you cautious in adopting that theory 

 of the origin of conscience. 



3. In Darwin's attempt to trace the development 

 of conscience from purely animal instincts, ideas of 

 morality drawn from other sources slip into the argu- 

 ment. (See this criticism developed in Newman 

 Smyth's Religious Feeling, and in St. George Mi- 

 VARt's Genesis of Species, and in various other 

 writers.) 



The atmosphere in which he conducts his experi- 

 ment is full of germs of the moral sense. It has been 



