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his nobler purposes into effect. He sees that some 

 particular course of action is his duty, and should be 

 his delight ; but his inclinations are fickle and base, and 

 do not conform to his better judgment. The whole 

 moral nature of man is tainted with sin, which prevents 

 him from doing the things he knows to be right. 



" I venture to offer an explanation of this apparent 

 anomaly which seems perfectly satisfactory from a 

 scientific point of view. It is neither more nor less 

 than that the development of our nature, under 

 Darwin's law of Natural Selection, has not yet over- 

 taken the development of our religious civilisation. 

 Man was barbarous but yesterday, and therefore it 

 is not to be expected that the natural aptitudes of 

 his race should already have become moulded into 

 accordance with his very recent advance. We men of 

 the present centuries are like animals suddenly trans- 

 planted among new conditions of climate and of food ; 

 our instincts fail us under the altered circumstances. 



" My theory is confirmed by the fact that the 

 members of old civilisations are far less sensible 

 than those newly converted from barbarism, of their 

 nature being inadequate to their moral needs. The 

 conscience of a negro is aghast at his own wild 

 impulsive nature, and is easily stirred by a preacher ; 

 but it is scarcely possible to ruffle the self-complacency 

 of a steady-going Chinaman. 



" The sense of Original Sin would show, according 

 to my theory, not that man was fallen from a high 

 estate, but that he was rapidly rising from a low one. 

 It would therefore confirm the conclusion that has 

 been arrived at by every independent line of ethno- 

 logical research, that our forefathers were utter 



