THE BRITISH NATURALIST. 



293 



only now that the social instinct which forbids injury to and stimulates 

 to help of other members of the same community had risen to such a 

 height and acquired such power as to be worthy of the name of 

 conscience. 



Whilst it is of course true that religious training has largely 

 influenced what the modern Christian calls his conscience, and also 

 probable that the conscience of Neolithic man was influenced by 

 religious notions of a more or less rudimentary character, yet it is 

 equally clear that, fundamentally, conscience springs from the social 

 instincts, from that love of praise and dread of blame which are 

 inevitably produced by social sympathy at all but the lowest levels of 

 intelligence. It would be easy to illustrate this truth from the habits 

 of many existing peoples, both savage and civilized, but it must 

 suffice now to assert that love, sympathy, self-command, conscience, 

 and the sense of duty have been evolved from lower social instincts, 

 and are as purely the result of natural causes as any part of our 

 physical organization. 



Whilst, however, frankly recognising that the social instincts form 

 the historical basis and starting point of ethical sentiment, I cannot 

 share the opinion, which appears to have secured an increasing number 

 of adherents, that the welfare of the species is both the cause and the 

 standard of morality. Those who hold this opinion ignore, or at least 

 minimize, important historical facts ; but, as has been often said, 

 "facts are stubborn things," they decline to suppress themselves in 

 favour of any hypothesis, scientific or otherwise, and theories which 

 are inconsistent with facts have sooner or later to be taken back for 

 enlargement and repair. The pages of a natural history magazine are 

 not the place for an essay on the evidences of Christianity, but had the 

 case been otherwise, it would not have been difficult to show that 

 belief in the Divine nature and mission of Him who was known to His 

 contemporaries as Jesus of Nazareth is amply justified ; and if that be 

 so our whole attitude, both to evolution at large and to the part of it 

 which has been dealt with in the preceding pages, must be widely 

 different from what it would otherwise be. 



For those who hold that its evidences are inadequate and who reject 

 the Christian revelation, belief in the existence of God becomes " an 

 immoral pretence," since no one who has any adequate conception of 

 evolution can honestly accept the old natural theology argument from 

 design : the belief that the welfare of the species is both the cause and 

 the standard of morality seems to be a necessary corollary of this 

 position. On the other hand, those who accept the Christian revela- 

 tion necessarily regard the universe as a manifestation of the Divine 

 will, of which another aspect was presented when at a fit stage in the 

 history of humanity a more direct revelation of the Divine nature was 



