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Again elsewhere: “The moral sense or conscience, as Mackintosh remarks, has a rightful supremacy over every other principle of human action. It is summed up in that short but imperious word ought,” and Darwin proceeds to quote Kant’s apostrophe as follows: “Duty! wondrous thought, that workest neither by fond insinuation, flattery, nor by any threat, but merely by holding up thy naked law in the soul, and so extorting for thyself always reverence, if not always obedience; before whom all appetites are dumb, however secretly they rebel. Duty! whence thy original?”[19]

Darwin continues: “This great question, ‘Whence thy origin?’ has been discussed by many writers of consummate ability; and my sole excuse for touching on it is ... that, as far as I know, no one has approached it exclusively from the side of natural history.”[20]

“But as the feelings of love and sympathy and the power of self-command become strengthened by habit, and as the power of reasoning becomes clearer, so that man can appreciate the justice of the judgments of his fellow-men, he will feel himself impelled, independently of any pleasure or pain felt at the moment, to risk his life for his fellow-creature, or to sacrifice himself for any great cause. He may then say, I am the supreme judge of my own conduct, and, in the words of Kant, I will not in my own person violate the dignity of humanity.”[21]