L'TI Eoolutiun of Morals. 



the lessons of experience. The recognition of the derivative 

 character of duty, however, as interprett^l l)y k'gitiniate 

 inferences from the study of the evohition of morals, would 

 appear to strengtlien rather than to weaken its imperative 

 nature, since it thus ap})ears that the sense of obligation is 

 derived from the essential nature of things — the very con- 

 stitution of the universe. Duty is derived only as man and 

 all his faculties are derived. It appears in the human mind 

 as the culmination of the entire process of evolution. All 

 living things, all worlds, the Infinite Power which is revealed 

 in all phenomenal manifestations, have striven to build up 

 this imperative impulse in the mind of man. It is the latest 

 and finest product of evolutionary labor, and necessarily, 

 therefore, a supreme obligation to him in whose mind it has 

 developed, until its behests are completely organized in his 

 being. Then obligation ceases, only to give place to pleas- 

 urable instinct ; and right action becomes as natural as the 

 blossoming of flowers or the silent, resistless operation of 

 the law of gravity. To be consistent, the intuitionist is 

 compelled to deny that spontaneous right-action, pleasurably 

 anticipated, and unaccompanied by a sense of compulsion, 

 possesses any moral value whatever. The advocates of this 

 theory are so earnest in affirming that a sense of duty and 

 of the difficulty of doing right are essential to morality, 

 that one might naturally infer that they must be personally 

 conscious of heinous moral guilt, and suffering therefor the 

 pangs of remorse. They would doubtless resent the per- 

 sonal inference, however, as energetically as does the 

 sleek devotee of the revival meeting, who denounces him- 

 self, in a Pickwickian sense, as the vilest of sinners. Moral 

 spasms and paroxysms of self-condemnation illustrate not 

 only an immature stage of moral development in the subject, 

 but also an immature phase of thought concerning the 

 nature and sanctions of morality. Kant's definition of 

 Duty as "necessitation to an end which is unwillingly 

 adopted," certainly justifies us in cherishing Spencer's hope 

 that pleasurable spontaneity in right action will ultimately 

 supersede the sense of obligation.* Happy and willing 

 obedience to the moral law would certainly seem to indicate 

 a higher condition of ethical health than the compulsory 

 and unwilling ])erformance of moral obligations ; and the 

 self-respect implied in such obedience is ethically a nobler 



* Spencer's Ethics (if Kant. See also, Data of Ethics. 



