Читать книгу The Scientific Spirit of the Age, and Other Pleas and Discussions онлайн

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These two doctrines—that Conscience is only the “capitalized experience of the human tribe” (as Dr. Martineau has summarized Mr. Spencer) and that there is no such thing as absolute or immutable Morality, but only a convenient Rule for each particular class of intelligent animals—have between them revolutionized theoretic ethics, and deeply imperilled, so far as they are accepted, the existence of human virtue. It is in vain that the plea is often entered on the side of faith that, after all, Darwin only showed how Conscience has been evolved, perhaps by Divine prearrangement, and that we may allow its old authority all the same. He has done much more than this. He has destroyed the possibility of retaining the same reverence for the dictates of conscience. As he himself asks, “Would any of us trust in the convictions of a monkey’s mind?... The doubt always arises whether the convictions of man’s mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value.” (Life, vol. i. p. 316.) Who, indeed, can attach the same solemn authority to the monitions of the