or deities, yet their
philosophers, if they had any, have sooner or later bowed Him out.

2. Most systems of philosophic speculation, ancient and modern, tend to
weaken the sense of moral accountability. First, the atomic theory,
which we have just considered, leads to this result by the molecular,
and therefore purely physical, origin which it assigns to moral acts and
conditions. We have already alluded to Herbert Spencer's theory of
intuition. In the "Data of Ethics," page 123, he says: "I believe that
the experiences of utility, organized and consolidated through all past
generations of the human race, have been producing corresponding nervous
modifications, which by continued transmission and accumulation _have
become in us certain faculties of moral intuition_, certain emotions
corresponding to right and wrong conduct which have no apparent basis in
the individual experiences of utility."

It appears from this statement that, so far as we are concerned, our
moral intuitions are the results of "nervous modifications," if not in
ourselves, at least in our ancestors, so that the controlling influence
which rules, and which ought to rule, our conduct is a nervous, and
therefore a physical, condition which we have inherited. It follows,
therefore, that every man's conscience or inherited moral sense is bound
by a necessity of his physical constitution. And if this be so, why is
there not a wide door here opened for theories of moral insanity, which
might come at length to cast their shield over all forms and grades of
crime? It is easy to see that, whatever theory of creation may be
admitted as to the origin of the human soul, this hypothesis rules out
the idea of an original moral likeness of the human spirit to a Supreme
Moral Ruler of the universe, in whom righteousness dwells as an eternal
principle; and it finds no higher source for what we call conscience
than the accumulated experience of our ancestors.

The materialistic view recently presented by Dr. Henry Maudsley, in an
article entitled, "The Physical Basis of Mind"--an article which seems
to follow Mr. Spencer very closely--would break down all moral
responsibility. His theory that true character depends upon what he
calls the reflex action of the nerve-cells; that acts of reason or
conscience which have been put forth so many times that, in a sense,
they perform themselves without any exercise of consciousness, are the
best; that a man is an instinctive