PARTIAL CONCILIATION OF THE NEW AND OLD ETHICS. 391 



to say against these views of the nature and meaning of 

 our present moral principles. On the contrary, science 

 must concede that it is in accordance with our present 

 developed moral nature that men should act ; that under 

 these, guided by reason, they do, in fact, act. And the 

 evolutionist may very well agree with the idealist on 

 the matter of fact alleged by the latter that the species 

 is scarcely less now than at any former period in its 

 history, governed and swayed by moral ideas. He may 

 reply to the idealist that the moral sentiments are not 

 likely to be sapped by a knowledge of the germs and 

 roots from which their highest flowers have sprung in 

 the later history of mankind. 



The evolution moralist, as well as any, may assert 

 the fact, which is merely in accordance with the general 

 principles of evolution itself, that the moral conscious- 

 ness of mankind has become both more widened and 

 deepened in modern times ; that men, in all civilized 

 communities at least, are now more generally regardful 

 of the claims of truth and justice ; that they have a 

 clearer perception of the extended relations to which the 

 developed notion of justice applies ; that they show a 

 greater respect for veracity in their speech, and a clearer 

 appreciation of the claims of discovered and established 

 general truths on their regards. Further, they may 

 contend, too, that men now more actively pursue the 

 good of others, and, though the fact is certainly not 

 insisted on by Herbert Spencer, that their souls are as 

 inflammable as ever to the influence of great disinte- 

 rested ideas. For, in fact, the emotions which are the 

 inner force and fire to the higher virtues, exist now, at 

 least in potential form which might easily be stirred into 

 active existence, in more developed amount and intenser 

 degree in the individual, as they have also extended 



