254 The Morality of Nature 



tary inferences of the mental machinery from the causative 

 event. They have become automatic, in the same way that 

 the processes of walking or of breathing have become in- 

 voluntary, although in lesser degree, because of less age and 

 greater diversity. The method of preservation and trans- 

 mission is a study in evolution. It must be assumed here 

 that such a method does indeed physically link and unite all 

 the ancestral generations with that now existing. The pro- 

 cess of natural selection, as now understood, could alone 

 evolve conscience, and further could explain its two forms of 

 judgment, one intuitive and instantaneous, and the other 

 reasoning and receptive. The continued survival of those 

 individuals most fit in their perception of what is right, and 

 the corresponding rejection of those creatures less able to 

 perceive it, will evidently select creatures of certain aptitudes 

 and preferences for that line of conduct, even if their prefer- 

 ences are fortuitous. These, when they are psychological 

 faculties, will indubitably be accompanied by a certain physi- 

 cal organization, which heredity will carry forward, and so 

 endow new generations with the capacity ; and even some of 

 the perception itself. Then later association develops this 

 faculty (as any other) in extension of the heredity, in the 

 manner seen in previous observations of heredity and educa- 

 tion. The inherited aptitude is charged with the parents' 

 experience, and their inherited wisdom; and then the com- 

 munity wisdom is added in greater volume but with lesser 

 force; and upon this the new personal experience builds self- 

 formed convictions. And clearly those perceptions which 

 are oldest, and longest fixed in conscience by heredity, can 

 only be those relating to long enduring and fundamental 



