Conscience in Animals . 
146 
[April, 
social instincts. Indeed, to any one who impartially consi- 
ders this evidence in the light of the general theory of 
evolution, it must appear well-nigh incredible that so consi- 
derable a body of proof can ever admit of being overcome. 
Nor is this all. Not only is it true that so much success 
has attended Mr. Darwin’s method of determining syntheti- 
cally the causes which have been instrumental in evolving 
the moral sense,* but, long before any scientific theory of 
evolution had been given to the world, our great logician — 
following in the track of Hume (whose part in this matter 
has not, I think, been sufficiently appreciated), Bentham, and 
others — proved analytically, to the satisfaction of all com- 
petent and impartial thinkers, that the moral sense is rooted 
in “the greatest amount of happiness principle ” as its sus- 
taining source. In other words, John Stuart Mill, by 
examining Conscience as he found it to exist in Man, showed 
that it depends upon the very principle upon which it ought 
to depend, supposing Mr. Darwin’s theory — elaborated, be it 
remembered, without any reference to Mr. Mill’s analysis, 
and arrived at by a totally different line of enquiry — con- 
cerning the causes of its evolution to be the true one. 
Stronger evidence, then, as to the physical causes whose 
operation has brought human conscience into being, we 
could scarcely expeCt, in the present condition of physical 
science, to possess. It is unnecessary, however, in this 
place to enter into the details of this evidence, as almost 
every educated person must be more or less acquainted with 
them. I shall therefore pass on to the next point which 
concerns us — namely, supposing the causes of our moral 
sense to have had their origin in the social instincts, where 
and to what extent should we expedt to find indications of 
an incipient moral sense in animals ? First, then, what do 
we mean by conscience ? We mean that faculty of our 
minds which renders possible remorse or satisfaction for past 
conduct, which has been respectively injurious or beneficial 
to others. f This, at least, is what I conceive conscience to 
be in its last resort. No doubt, as we find it in actual ope- 
ration, the faculty in question has reference to ideas of a 
higher abstraction than that of the fellow man whom we 
have injured or benefited. In most cases the moral sense 
has reference to the volitions of a Deity, and in others to 
* I willingly endorse the just tribute recently paid to this part of Mr. Darwin’s 
work by Prof. Clifford : — “ To my mind the simplest and clearest and most 
profound philosophy that was ever written upon this subjedt is to be found in 
chapters ii. and iii. of Mr. Darwin’s ‘ Descent of Man.’ ” — Fort. Rev ., p. 794. 
f For reasons which may easily be gathered from the next succeeding sen- 
tences, I omit conscientious ideas of what is due to self. 
