Conscience in Animals. 
[April, 
150 
even of our suspedting the presence of an incipient moral 
sense, we can perceive abundant indications of the presence 
of pride. And forasmuch as animals that are high in the 
psychological scale frequently exhibit a very profound appre- 
ciation of their own dignity, we may pretty safely conclude 
that in no case can we expert to find indications of a moral 
sense in an animal without a greater or less admixture of pride. 
I will now sum up this rather tedious preamble : — From 
Mr. Darwin’s theory concerning the development of con- 
science, it appears to follow that the presence of this faculty 
in animals must be restricted — if it occurs at all — to those 
which are intelligent enough to be capable in some degree 
of reflecting upon past conduct, and which likewise possess 
social and sympathetic instincts. From the first of these 
conditions it follows, supposing Mr. Darwin’s theory true, 
that in the case of no animal should we expeCt to find the 
moral sense developed in any other than a low degree. 
There is no reason to suppose any mere instinct (such as 
the maternal) due to conscience ; for an instinCt acquired 
by inheritance is obeyed blindly, in order to avoid the un- 
comfortable sensation which ensues in a direCt manner if it 
is not so obeyed, — whereas conscience enforces obedience 
only through a process of reflection ;* the uncomfortable 
sensation which non-obedience entails in this case being only 
brought about in an indirect manner through the agency of 
re-presentative thought. 
Although conscience in man is independent of, or distinct 
from, love of approbation, fear of reproach, and sense of 
pride, there is no reason why we should suppose conscience 
in its rudimentary forms to be independent of these passions. 
On the contrary, I think we should expeCt a rudimentary 
form of conscience to be more or less amalgamated with 
such passions ; for long before the faculty in question has 
attained the highly differentiated state in which we find it to 
be present in ourselves, it must (by the hypothesis) have 
passed through innumerable states of lesser differentiation 
in which its existence was presumably more and more bound 
up with that of those more primary social instincts from 
which it first derived its origin. To us conscience means a 
massive consolidation of innumerable experiences, inherited 
and acquired, of remorse following one class of actions and 
gratification their opposites ; and this massive body of 
* I. e originally : when once the habit of yielding obedience to conscience 
has been acquired, it becomes itself of the nature of an instindt — negledt to 
pradtise this habit giving rise immediately, or without any process of reflec- 
tion, to an uncomfortable state of the mind. 
