394 
GENERAL SUMMARY 
Part II. 
well developed, will be led to good actions, and may 
have a fairly sensitive conscience. But whatever ren- 
ders the imagination of men more vivid and strengthens 
the habit of recalling and comparing past impressions, 
will make the conscience more sensitive, and may even 
compensate to a certain extent for weak social affections 
and sympathies. 
Ihe moral nature of man has reached the highest 
stand aid as yet attained, partly through the advance- 
ment of the reasoning powers and consequently of a just 
public opinion, but especially through the sympathies 
being rendered more tender and widely diffused through 
the effects of habit, example, instruction, and reflection. 
It is not improbable that virtuous tendencies may 
through long practice be inherited. With the more 
civilised races, the conviction of the existence of an 
all-seeing Deity has had a potent influence on the 
advancement of morality. Ultimately man no longer 
accepts the praise or blame of his fellows as his chief 
guide, though few escape this influence, but his habi- 
tual convictions controlled by reason afford him the 
safest rule. His conscience then becomes his supreme 
judge and monitor. Nevertheless the first foundation 
or origin of the moral sense lies in the social instincts, 
including sympathy ; and these instincts no doubt were 
primarily gained, as in the case of the lower animals, 
through natural selection. 
The belief in God has often been advanced as not 
only the greatest, but the most complete of all the 
distinctions between man and the lower animals. It is 
however impossible, as we have seen, to maintain that 
this belief is innate or instinctive in man. On the 
other hand a belief in all-pervading spiritual agencies 
seems to be universal ; and apparently follows from a 
