262 Evolution of Morals. 



thousand years since man was derived from that old-world 

 ape, " probably arboreal in its habits/' which Mr. Darwin 

 regards as man's immediate ancestor. Into this dim past, 

 guided by such facts as we may obtain from archaeological, 

 philological and aboriginal studies, we must prolong our 

 mental vision, and form such conception as we may of the 

 characters of our early ancestors, and the probable facts 

 involved in the evolution of man's moral nature. 



Somehow, in the struggle for existence, primitive man 

 had evolved greater intellectual capacity and acuteness than 

 the brute-creatures by whom he was surrounded. His 

 relative feebleness, and the consequent adversities against 

 which he had to struggle, doubtless helped to secure this 

 result. It is this intellectual characteristic — closely 

 related on its biological side to the development and posses- 

 sion of a fore-limb and hand capable of manual dexterity, 

 and the physical organs and intellectual possibility of 

 speech — which, in the judgment of Mr. Darwin, differen- 

 tiates man from the lower animals. This superior intellect- 

 ual capacity has its bearing on the evolution of conduct, as 

 we have already seen ; but a fact even more pertinent to our 

 inquiry, as Mr. Fiske has shown,* is the lengthening of the 

 period of infancy, which necessitated more prolonged care 

 for the offspring of man's progenitor than that which is 

 bestowed by any other animal. It was registered in the 

 great Book of Life, of which man's history constitutes the 

 latest chapter, that only by becoming as a little child could 

 he enter into the high heaven of moral aspiration and en- 

 deavor. 



The earliest instincts of primitive man were doubtless 

 purely egoistic, like those of the brutes ; they were not im- 

 moral, properly speaking, but un-moral; the moral sense 

 was as yet undeveloped. If proof of this assertion is needed, 

 it may be found in the study of language — in the investi- 

 gation of the origins of those words which Ave now use to 

 define and express ethical conceptions. "If we examine 

 the words, those oldest prehistoric testimonies," says Geiger, 

 an eminent philological authority, " we shall find that all 

 [expressions of] moral notions contain something morally 

 indifferent." The original meaning of "right," for exam- 

 ple, is straight; of "wrong," wrung or crooked. "Con- 

 science" has primarily an intellectual, "ought" and "duty " 



*Fiske's Cosmic Philosophy. 



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