eration, there is no great reason why such connections should not be formed between the paths which represent certain acts, like murder, for example, and those which are the physiological counterparts of the ought-feelings, whatever they may be, and be handed down to offspring. This would not mean that the child is born with these two psychical states together, but it would mean that, under the proper conditions and at the proper time, the connection would be formed more easily than if it had not already existed in a long line of ancestors.1

1 See Darwin, Descent of Man, pp. 123 f. After quoting that part of Spencer's letter to Mill in which Spencer expresses his belief in the transmission of moral intuitions, Darwin says: "There is not the least inherent improbability, as it seems to me, in virtuous tendencies being more or less strongly inherited; for, not to mention the various dispositions and habits transmitted by many of our domestic animals to their offspring, I have heard of authentic cases in which a desire to steal and a tendency to lie appeared to run in families of the upper ranks; and as stealing is a rare crime in the wealthy classes, we can hardly account by accidental coincidence for the tendency occurring in two or three members of the same family. If bad tendencies are transmitted, it is probable that good ones are likewise transmitted. That the state of the body, by affecting the brain, has great influence on the moral tendencies is known to most of those who have suffered from chronic derangements of the digestion or liver. The same fact is likewise shown by the 'perversion or destruction of the moral sense being often one of the earliest symptoms of mental derangement' (Maudsley, Body and Mind, 1870, p. 60), and insanity is notoriously often inherited. Except through the principle of the transmission of moral tendencies, we cannot understand the differences believed to exist in this respect between the various races of mankind. Even the partial transmission of virtuous tendencies would be an immense assistance to the primary impulse derived directly and indirectly from the social instincts.

Nor would this mean that the connection has existed forever and will continue to exist forever, that it is inseparable and eternal, or that the same combinations exist in all human beings.

Whether such tendencies to feel bound in the presence of certain acts are really inherited, we cannot tell positively, but there is nothing improbable in the thought. The fact that time and training are required to bring out the moral feelings would be no argument against the belief. There are many instincts in man which do not ripen at once and without the proper excitants, and yet we do not deny to them their instinctive and innate character.

Let us sum up: The moral feelings, as we find them now, are comparatively late arrivals in the history of the individual and the race. They are not the original and inseparable companions of any particular acts, but may become attached to all forms of conduct under suitable conditions. There is nothing impossible in the notion that the tendency to feel them in connection with certain acts may

Admitting for a moment that virtuous tendencies are inherited, it appears probable, at least in such cases as chastity, temperance, humanity to animals, etc., that they become first impressed on the mental organization through habit, instruction, and example, continued during several generations in the same family, and in a quite subordinate degree, or not at all, by the individuals possessing such virtues having succeeded best in the struggle for life." See also Darwin and Spencer in the passages quoted in chap. ii, § 7 (2) and (3); Carneri, Grundzüge der Ethik, pp. 348 f.; Entwickelung und Darwinismus, p. 212; Williams, Ethics, pp. 402 ff., 435 ff., 449 ff.; Sutherland, Moral Instinct, Vol. II, pp. 60 ff.

become fixed and habitual, and be transmitted to offspring.

But, the question may be asked, how did the first man who ever felt obligation, etc., come to feel that way? What is the first origin of the feeling? Even if we should maintain that it is a form of vague fear, we should still have to inquire, Whence did it spring? It is as hard to solve this problem as it is to solve the problem of first beginnings in general. How did any feeling, or in fact anything, originally arise? We do not know. We do not know how consciousness arose, or, indeed, how it arises every day in new human beings, or how one thought springs from the other. We think and feel and will, and think and feel and will about our own thinking, feeling, and willing; but how all that is possible we are utterly at a loss to understand. I can explain to you the antecedent and concomitant processes, both physical and mental, which go with certain ideas and feelings and volitions, but if you ask me how such a state as a conscious process is possible at all, I must remain silent. I know that consciousness is; what it is in the last analysis, and how it came to be, I cannot tell. We have reached the confines of our science at this point. Here the moralist must take leave of you, and hand you over to the tender mercies of the theologian or metaphysician. Did God create the feeling of obligation? Well, if He created you, He created all of you, and there is no need of singling out one particular feel

ing. Is the feeling of obligation the self-imposed law of your own personality? Yes, in the sense that you are your feeling of obligation, that the feeling is not outside of you, something standing over and against you, but in you and of you.

10. The Infallibility and Immediacy of Conscience. After the foregoing, it will not be difficult to discover our attitude toward several questions which are frequently asked with respect to the conscience. Is conscience infallible? Kant calls an erring conscience "a chimera." 1 Before we can answer this question we must understand its meaning. If all such acts are right as are preceded by the feeling of obligation, i.e., if the criterion of their goodness is the fact that they are dictated by conscience, then, of course, whatever conscience tells me is right, is right, and to say that conscience errs, is to contradict oneself. "An erring conscience" is, indeed, "a chimera," if conscience is the sole criterion of the rightness and wrongness of acts.

But we notice that the popular consciousness often condemns acts which have the approval of an individual conscience, and that history frequently reverses its judgments. It would appear from this that a mistake has been made somewhere, and that there is perhaps a principle by which we judge even the dictates of an individual conscience. If it is true, as some hold, that the goodness of acts ultimately depends upon the effects which they tend to 1 Abbott's translation, p. 311.

produce, and if it is true that the feeling of obliga tion may be connected with the ideas of acts which do not produce such effects, then an erring conscience is not a chimera. Ignorance, inexperience, and superstition may cause acts to be clothed with the authority of the law which succeeding generations may stamp with their disapproval. Then again, conditions may change and make new evaluations necessary. The conscience of the race represents the experience of the race, and grows as the latter grows. But the race conscience develops slowly, and may be outstripped by the individual conscience. An individual conscience may be in advance of its age; it may feel bound to forms of conduct which the future will adopt. Every great moral reformer who has been persecuted for conscience' sake was in advance of his times.1

Can conscience be educated? If our standpoint is correct, it can. Indeed, a man's conscience is largely the product of education, as we noticed before. Our teachers, past and present, surround the ideas of certain acts with moral feelings, and so educate us into morality. Even if we regard conscience as a form of obligation without regard to content, we must hold that its existence depends on training. The feeling of obligation will not appear unless consciousness as a whole is developed.

Does conscience immediately tell us what is right and wrong? Not in every instance. A member of 1 See Paulsen, Ethics, pp. 357 ff.