130 Trans. Acad, Sci. of St. Louis. 



«' The only way in which we can really show the absoluteness of moral 

 judgments is by basing them upon reason. Then sympathy is raised into the 

 form of the judgment that an act is right or wrong, according as it does or 

 does not tend to the realization of the ideal or spiritual nature. An act is 

 not right because it is felt to be so, but we feel it to be so because it is 

 right." — " Hedonistic Theories," by John Watson. 



" Conscience is not, as some believe, a special faculty which is the source 

 of obligation, and which, as its own distinct province, sits in judgment 

 upon conduct, and pronounces the decisive ' ought ' of approval, or ' ought 

 not ' of disapproval. Conscience is simply the consciousness of obliga- 

 tion." — "A Short Study of Ethics," by Charles F. D'Arcy. 



IV. Theories Concerning the Origin and Growth of Conscience 

 AND THE Ethical Ideal. 



"It appears to me that, if we recognize man as a being having feelings 

 towards others as well as towards himself, as sympathetic and resentful as 

 well as self -regarding, with a reason capable of comparing the ends to 

 which his feelings impel him and of finding means for the attainment of 

 those ends, there is no difiiculLy, except in detail, in explaining the process 

 by which men arrive either at the moral judgments in which they agree or 

 at those in which they differ." — ♦• The Principles of Morals," by Fowler 

 and Wilson. 



"It seems to be frequently assumed, that if it can be shown how certain 

 mental phenomena, thoughts or feelings, have grown up — if we can point 

 to the antecedent phenomena, of which they are the natural consequents — 

 then suddenly the phenomena which we began by investigating have van- 

 ished; they are no longer there, but something else which we have mistaken 

 for them: the * elements' of which they are said to be 'composed.' The 

 illegitimacy of this inference will, I think, be allowed as soon as it is 

 clearly contemplated." — '* The Methods of Ethics," by Henry Sidgwick. 



'' Any animal whatever, endowed with well-marked social instincts, the 

 parental and filial affections being here included, would inevitably acquire a 

 moral sense or conscience, as soon as its intellectual powers had become as 

 well, or nearly as well developed, as in man." — **The Descent of Man," 

 by Charles Darwin. 



'* The sense of duty assumes an appearance of inscrutable origin because 

 it arises at aperiod of which we have no memory." * ♦ * ''As mem- 

 bers of the community, we learn to judge others by a standard of duty; 

 and then, if our natures are fine enough to permit of it, we learn to judge 

 our own actions by the same standard. Self-respect is thus the inward 

 application of an outwardly prevalent mode of thinking." — "The Origin 

 and Growth of the Moral Instinct," by Alexander Sutherland. 



'* Suppose that a man has done something obviously harmful to the com- 

 munity. Either some immediate desire, or his individual self, has for once 



