of the past very slowly, if at all. On the other hand, excessive imitativeness destroys all individuality and independence of character, and reduces the man to an automaton, who moves only in drill, and does nothing except in blind imitation of a supposed superior.

7. To these social instincts should probably be added also the instinct of local attachment. It is certain that some persons become very strongly attached to places; others have no such attachment. It is said that the cat is attached to the house, the dog to the master. The one pines for the house, the other for the man. A like difference is seen in men. Generally women have stronger local attachments than men. A rude violation of this instinct is one of the chief causes of home-sickness. A principal value of it is a certain kind of local stability. Without it all men would be, as are the Bedouin Arabs, nomadic.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE SPIRITUAL IMPULSES.

MAN is distinguished from the rest of the animal creation by his moral and spiritual nature. The distinction recog

nized in the earlier books of mental science between reason and instinct is now largely abandoned. There are instinctive and almost automatic actions, as there are intelligent and thoughtful ones; but the distinction between the brute and the man is not in the possession of mere instinct by the one and of reason by the other. Man sometimes acts from instinct; he does so whensoever he follows blindly one of the impulses which we have described above, without stopping to submit the proposed action to the questions and directions of his reasoning powers. On the other hand, there are abundant evidences of the possession and use of reasoning power by the brute creation, though in very crude forms and within very narrow limitations. The dog, the horse, the elephant, consider, reflect, reason. They exercise the faculty of causality and comparison, of which we shall have something to say in a subsequent chapter. But there is no indication whatever of the possession or exercise by them of any moral discrimination, or of any spiritual power. It is the moral and spiritual powers of which we are now about to speak which distinguish man from the brute. Brutes reason as truly as men; but every man is a law unto himself, while the brutes are subject to law only as they are brought under it by a superior force. They do not rule themselves by recognized laws of right and wrong. The only law recognized is the law of the strongest. All men worship; the exceptions, if there are any, are so few as to be insignificant. Every nation

has its religion or its superstition, its god or its demon, its temple or its fetish. There is no indication of any thing analogous to worship among the brutes; they have houses, but no temple; social organization, but no revealed law; domestic instincts, but no spirit of universal benevolence.

1. Conscience is the factor which recognizes the inherent and essential distinction between right and wrong, and which impels to the right and dissuades from the wrong. It does not come within the province of this book to discuss either the basis of ethics or its laws; to consider either why some things are wrong and others are right, nor to point out what is wrong and what is right. That belongs to moral science, not to mental science. It must suffice here to say that the distinction between right and wrong is recognized in all peoples, and is one of the first objects of perception in childhood. Standards differ in different races and in different ages. The power of moral discrimination is subject to education both for good and for evil. But the sense of ought is as universal as the sense of beauty. That there is a right and a wrong is as evident to every mind as that there is a wise and a foolish, a beautiful and an ugly, a pleasant and a disagreeable. There are things pleasant and things repulsive to the moral sense, as there are things pleasant and things repulsive to the eye and to the palate; there is a sense of right and wrong as there is a sense of beauty and a sense of taste. It has been a matter of great debate among philosophers what is the ground of right and wrong. We cannot here enter into this debate. I shall assume, what is by no means universally conceded, that it is a primary fact in life; that the right is right and the wrong is wrong, irrespective both of commands and consequences; that the right is right not because God commanded, but God commands it because it is right; and it is right not because it produces happiness, but it produces happiness because it is right. That it would still be right though it produced misery instead of happiness,

and was forbidden, not commanded; that it is as truly the law of God's nature as of man's nature; and that if we could conceive his commanding any of his children to do what is not right it would change, not the character of the action, but his own character. I assume, too, that as right and wrong are primary facts of human life, so the faculty which recognizes that fact, and which impels men to do right and to eschew wrong, is a primary faculty. Men are to be guided by their judgment in determining what is right and what is. wrong; but the judgment does not determine that there is a right and a wrong. Their sense of right and wrong is clarified or obscured, their impulse to the right and away from the wrong is strengthened or weakened, by other faculties; but it is not dependent upon them. Approbativeness may lead them to do what other people think to be right; but desire for the approbation of others is not conscience, nor the ground nor basis of conscience.* Self-esteem may

strengthen their purpose to do right, and so win their own. approval; but self-esteem is not conscience, and self-esteem and conscience may come into direct conflict. Benevolence may add its persuasions to the impulse of conscience, and the man may be impelled to do right because doing right will also do good to others. But this is not the ground of his conviction that there is a right; and the right may even seem to be fraught with irreparable injury and no compensatory good to others, and so benevolence and conscience come in conflict. The recognition of right and wrong and the impulse to right and away from wrong is original, primary, causeless, one of the simple and indivisible powers of the soul of man. I cannot better state this truth-I have no space here to argue it-than in the words of Professor Huxley, who will certainly not be accused of any undue orthodox proclivities:

* As Darwin makes it. See his "Emotions in Animals and Man."

"Justice is founded on the love of one's neighbor; and goodness is a kind of beauty. The moral law, like the laws of physical nature, rests in the long run upon instinctive intuitions, and is neither more nor less innate and necessary than they are. Some people cannot by any means be got to understand the first book of Euclid; but the truths of mathematics are no less necessary and binding on the great mass of mankind. Some there are who cannot feel the difference between the Sonata Apassionata and Cherry Ripe; or between a grave-stone cutter's cherub and the Apollo Belvedere; but the canons of art are none the less acknowledged. While some there may be who, devoid of sympathy, are incapable of a sense of duty; but neither does their existence affect the foundations of morality. Such pathological deviations from true manhood are merely the halt, the lame, the blind of the world of consciousness; and the anatomist of the mind leaves them aside, as the anatomist of the body would ignore abnormal specimens."*

It is hardly necessary to point out the function or dwell upon the necessity of conscience in human life. It is fundamental to all that is human in life. Without it men would be brutes; society would be wholly predatory; the only law recognized would be the law of the strongest; the only restraint on cupidity would be self-interest. There could be neither justice nor freedom. Trade would be a perpetual attempt at the spoliation of one's neighbor. Law could be enforced only by fear, and government would be of necessity a despotism. The higher faculties uninfluenced by conscience would rapidly degenerate. Reverence would no longer be paid to the good and the true, but only to the strong and the terrible; religion would become a superstition; God a demon ruling by fear, not by law; punishment a torment inflicted by hate and wrath, not a penalty sanc

"English Men of Letters: Hume," by Prof. Huxley. Harper & Brothers, p. 206.