PARTIAL CONCILIATION OF THE NEW AND OLD ETHICS. 385 



slow development through the course of man's natural 

 history. The meaning is to be sought for and found only 

 in the feelings themselves, wholly irrespective of any 

 knowledge of their derivation, whether in ourselves in 

 our short life, or in the species in its lengthened one. 

 Let the evolutionist grant, as he can quite afford to do, 

 that the true meaning and intention of our moral prin- 

 ciples of action is to be found in their developed form as 

 shown within ourselves to-day, and is not to be found in 

 the rude primitive germs, the first fugitive moral gleams 

 in our remote human or animal ancestors ; that, in fact, 

 if we had neither psychological nor evolution teaching as 

 to their origin, we should still know the meaning of our 

 moral impulses. More especially : to go back to their 

 origin in our species ages ago for light, is as useless and 

 misleading as it would be for the man to revert for an 

 explanation of those sentiments and principles of action 

 which govern his conduct as man, to their first appearance 

 in the boy. He would not obtain light by such a course 

 of retrospection; on the contrary, he would be leaving 

 light, only to find it fade more and more into final and 

 utter darkness. We should not thus find the true mean- 

 ing, or nature, or aim of pity, or love, or ambition, or 

 sacrifice, nor even of the sociable feelings ; for none of 

 these exist in the boy or in the undeveloped man in other 

 than rudimentary, that is, not in their real and proper 

 form. They have not the emotional and- moral content 

 which is necessary to constitute them truly moral prin- 

 ciples, as in the fully developed man. They only contain 

 faint intimations of the future principles. Indeed, strictly 

 speaking, our earliest sentiments and principles no more 

 resemble these when fully matured, than the grub the 

 butterfly, or the embryo in its several stages, the later- 

 developed animal. And not less is the difference between 



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