CHAP, viii EVOLUTION IN SPENCER 8 1 



modern men' possess intuitive knowledge partly of 

 mathematical, partly of moral truth simply because 

 our ancestors have had a wide range of experience of 

 mathematical and moral facts, and have been able 

 to impart their principles to us in the shape of innate 

 tendencies to believe tendencies which forestall 

 experience and anticipate its results ; generally with 

 accuracy. Thus Spencer has an answer for many 

 difficulties. What gives conscience its awful author- 

 ity over the human spirit ? What makes right and 

 wrong so different, psychologically, from a calcula- 

 tion of consequences ? Why, the experience of law- 

 abiding and dutiful generations, whose blood flows in 

 your veins. Again one asks, what is the hold that 

 the public weal has upon me, a separate individual, 

 with my own desires, ay, and my own rights? 

 But his reply is ready. The tribal or national con- 

 science is within you ; it is a part of you from your 

 birth ; sinning against it you sin against what is best 

 in yourself. Morally, however, Spencer gives this 

 no great range, and his colleague or disciple, Mr. 

 Leslie Stephen, writes a treatise on ethics without 

 once mentioning it. Spencer is little inclined to 

 admit true moral axioms ; he is resolved to keep the 

 door open for a phenomenalist doctrine of " causal 

 connexions " in conduct, if not exactly for hedonistic 

 sophistications. It is elsewhere that he has frankly 

 confessed the existence of axioms, mathematical or 

 " transcendental." He has got his explanation of 

 these, if he is allowed the appeal to use-inheritance ; 

 but if not ! Spencer is fighting for his hearth and 

 home and for all that he counts most sacred, when 

 he girds himself to refute Weismannism off the face 



