264 The Evolution Hypothesis. 



experience knows that he acts freely. " If that sense 

 of liberty is deceptive/' says Turrentin, " and we can- 

 not trust it, nothing human is certain, and universal 

 scepticism must follow."* Evolutionism treats as 

 illusive this consciousness of freedom. It frames a 

 theory of the correlation of organic and mental action 

 which fixes every purpose in a necessary physical 

 succession. The law of molecular motion in the physio- 

 logical units rules " the thoughts and intents of the 

 heart." But liberty and responsibility are crushed 

 out by this physical necessity. In the evolution hypo- 

 thesis there is no room for moral life. Its ethical 

 doctrine is sheer dynamic determinism. 



2. Having seen that evolution does not furnish the 

 conditions requisite for free and responsible action, let 

 us inquire what account it gives of the sense of obliga- 

 tion, and whether under its sway that moral intuition 

 could survive. 



Mr. Spencer arrives at the sense of obligation in this 

 way: In the evolution of animal organisms race- 

 needs render it inevitable that at times " the pleasures 

 of the present must be sacrificed to the pleasures of the 

 future." In this is found the essential characteristic 

 of the moral consciousness "the control of some 

 feeling or feelings by some other feeling or feelings." 

 "This conscious relinquishment of immediate and 

 special good to gain distant and general good, while it 



* Turretini DC, Libertate Humana. 



