y of no special people, but are the inevitable result
of continued life itself, and the evolution of civilizations however
different in outward form and expression. They are the necessary results
of human companionship and necessities, and not the fruits of any
religion or the "revelation" from on high to any people. As William
Kingdon Clifford, F. R. S., in his work on the "Scientific Basis of
Morals," very justly says:

"There is more than one moral sense, and what I feel to be right another
man may feel to be wrong.

"In just the same way our question about the best conscience will
resolve itself into a question about the purpose or function of the
conscience--why we have got it, and what it is good for.

"Now to my mind the simplest and clearest and most profound philosophy
that was ever written upon this subject is to be found in the 2d and 3d
chapters of Mr. Darwin's 'Descent of Man.' In these chapters it appears
that just as most physical characteristics of organisms have been
evolved and preserved because they were useful to the individual in the
struggle for existence against other individuals and other species, so
this particular feeling has been evolved and preserved because it is
useful to the tribe or community in the struggle for existence against
other tribes, and against the environment as a whole. The function of
conscience is the preservation of the tribe as a tribe. And we shall
rightly train our consciences if we learn to approve these actions which
tend to the advantage of the community.

"The virtue of purity, for example, attains in this way a fairly exact
definition: purity in a man is that course of conduct which makes him
to be a good husband and father, in a woman that which makes her to be a
good wife and mother, or which helps other people so to prepare and
keep themselves. It is easy to see how many false ideas and pernicious
precepts are swept away by even so simple a definition as that."

In urging the necessity of a more substantial basis of morals than one
built upon a theory of arbitrary dictation, he says: "The worship of a
deity who is represented as unfair or unfriendly to any portion of
the community is a wrong thing, however great may be the threats and
promises by which it is commended. And still worse, the reference of
right and wrong to his arbitrary will as a standard, the diversion of
the allegiance of the moral sense from the community to him, is the
most insidious and