88 HEREDITY. 



terialistic, as distinguished from theistic, evolution- 

 ists, namely, that axioms, intuitions, necessary be- 

 liefs, self-evident truths, are themselves only the 

 result of our habits ; an outcome of inheritance 

 through physiological causes, brought into activity 

 as the race and its animal progenitors have been, age 

 after age, boxed about by their environment from 

 the jelly-speck up. 



There has been one conscience in this world such 

 that the ages have felt that its laws reveal the 

 very nature of things. " Development," as Newman 

 Smyth remarks, " must account not only for man, but 

 for the Son of man." The conscience, which was 

 the author of Christianity, must have been the result 

 of development, if materialistic theories are correct. 



The moral sense, we are told, is only the sequel of 

 an accumulation of nerve-tracks in the brain. We 

 cannot say that our fundamental beliefs would not 

 be different if our environment had been so. The 

 central propositions, or necessary beliefs, on which 

 all scientific discussion has relied up to our day, are 

 now themselves to be brought into question in the 

 name of hereditary descent. Stuart Mill used to 

 affirm that there may be worlds in which two and 

 two do not make four. Even the mathematical axi- 

 oms he would explain as the result of operations of 

 the laws of association. Herbert Spencer, however, 

 thinks it very wild to account for our necessary 

 beliefs by individual experience merely. It is now 

 pretty generally conceded, that what we take in from 

 our finger-tips and other senses will not, by the laws 



