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Inquiries into Human Faculty
are consistent. Conscience is now known to be partly transmitted by
inheritance in the way and under the conditions clearly explained by Mr.
Darwin, and partly to be an unsuspected result of early education. The
value of inherited conscience lies in its being the organised result of the
social experiences of many generations, but it fails in so far as it expresses
the experience of generations whose habits differed from our own. The
doctrine of evolution shows that no race can be in perfect harmony with
its surroundings; the latter are continually changing, while the organism of
the race hobbles after, vainly trying to overtake them. Therefore the
inherited part of conscience cannot be an infallible guide, and the acquired
part of it may, under the influence of dogma, be a very bad one. The
history of fanaticism shows too clearly that this is not only a theory but a
fact. Happy the child, especially in these inquiring days, who has been
taught a religion that mainly rests on the moral obligations between man
and man in domestic and national life, and which, so far as it is
necessarily dogmatic, rests chiefly upon the proper interpretation of facts
about which there is no dispute,— namely, on those habitual occurrences
which are always open to observation, and which form the basis of so-
called natural religion.
It would be instructive to make a study of the working religion of good
and able men of all nations, in order to discover the real motives by which
they were severally animated,—men, I mean, who had been tried by both
prosperity and adversity, and had borne the test; who, while they led lives
full of interest to themselves, were beloved by their own family, noted
among those with whom they had business relations for their probity and
conciliatory ways, and honoured by a wider circle for their unselfish
furtherance of the public good. Such men exist of many faiths and in
many races.
Another interesting and cognate inquiry would be into the motives that
have sufficed to induce men who were leading happy lives, to meet death
willingly at a time when they were not particularly excited. Probably the
number of instances to be found, say among Mussulmans, who are
