370 THE FUTURE OF RELIGION AND MORALS. 



and through the teaching of our evolution moralists of 

 the former low source and the present vulgar utilitarian 

 sanction of the disinterested virtues. Even the senti- 

 ment of duty, it is feared, the sentiment that found a 

 lodging-place in all but the most abandoned breasts, and 

 that sometimes visited even these; the sentiment that 

 some actions must be done and others left undone, with- 

 out once counting cost or thinking of consequence; 

 even this, the source of all that is morally good or 

 worthy in man, and which chiefly exalts him above 

 the brute, seems in danger of being sapped by the 

 psychological account of its origin in the individual, 

 and by the evolutionist's account of its origin in the 

 species. 



Such are the fears, not to say the beliefs, of some ; 

 and it must be confessed that there are not wanting some 

 grounds for the apprehensions. For what is virtue, 

 according to the latest light thrown back on its origin, 

 and according to the evolution interpretation of the 

 facts ? A thing of human contrivance, an invention 

 which men were forced to make, as well from mutual 

 fear as from selfish calculations, a discovery, a device, 

 which if it had not been made neither their society nor 

 themselves would have existed. Morality was at first, 

 and still is in its essential features, a set of police regula- 

 tions, devised originally by the more politic heads of the 

 tribe to keep the unruly and anti-social spirits in order. 

 It was devised in the general interest of the tribe, to 

 produce harmony within, and strength against the ex- 

 ternal enemy. Morality, in short, was a discovery of 

 man like any other, a discovery easy to make, if necessity 

 had not forced him to make it, since he had already in- 

 herited the moral germs from his humbler quadrumanous 

 ancestors. He had but to improve and develop these, 



