re stages of natural growth and
development. Dr. Darwin's supposition takes no notice of the moral law
and its influence; indeed he adopts[2] the view that conscience is no
sense of right and wrong, but only the stored up and inherited social
instinct, a sense of convenience and inconvenience to the tribe and to
the individual, which at last acts so spontaneously and rapidly in
giving its verdict on anything, that we regard it as a special sense. It
would of course be possible to expend much time and many words in
argument on this subject. There is not, and never will be, any direct
evidence as to the origin of conscience; and as that sense (like any
other power of our mental nature) is capable of being educated, evoked,
enlightened, and strengthened, and may also by neglect and contradiction
deteriorate and wither away, there is ample room for allowing a certain
part of the theory.[3] But many people who examine their own conscience
will feel that the description certainly does not suit them; there are
many things which conscience disapproves, of which no great evil
consequences to themselves or any one else are felt. Conscience is
constantly condemning "the way that seemeth good unto a man."
_Ultimately_ no doubt, there is real evil at the end of everything that
conscience warns a man against; but not such as "inherited experience"
is likely to recognize. Is it, for instance, the experience of the mass
of men, as men, that the "fleshly mind is death, but the spiritual mind
is life and peace"? Is not rather the world at large habitually putting
money-making, position-making, and the care of the things of the body,
of time, and of sense, in the first place; and is not the moral law
perpetually warning us that the fashion of the world passes away, and
that what seems gold is in reality tinsel? As far as the condemnation
that conscience passes on the broad evils which affect society--"thou
shalt not steal," "thou shalt not lie," or so forth--no doubt it is
supported by the transmitted sense of inconvenience; but who has told it
of the evil of things that do not affect our social state? and who has
changed the inconvenient, the painful, into the _wrong_? It is one thing
to instinctively avoid a theft or a falsehood, even if the first origin
of such instinct were the fear of consequences or the love of
approbation; it is quite another--the inward condemnation of something
which "the deceitfulness of sin" is able to excuse, an