CONTENTS OF VOL. IV. PAGE THE PLACE OF CONSCIENCE IN EVOLUTION. By the Rev. T. W. Fowle, THE HISTORY OF THE INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION. By George Howell. IRONCLAD FIELD ARTILLERY. By Colonel C. B. Brackenbury. MUSIC AND MUSICAL CRITICISM. Part I. By Edmund Gurney WHAT THE SUN IS MADE OF. By J. Norman Lockyer . 98, 713 THE SECOND ADVENT AND THE CHURCH QUESTION. By the Rev. Dr. JEWS AND JUDAISM: A REJOINDER. By Rabbi Hermann Adler PROTECTED PRINCES IN INDIA. By Sir David Wedderburn, Bart. A MODERN SYMPOSIUM. SUBJECT (concluded): IS THE POPULAR THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. Part I. By Miss Florence Nightingale OLIBERTY IN GERMANY. By Leonard A. Montefiore SENIOR'S CONVERSATIONS. By M. E. Grant Duff, M.P. MALTA. By F. W. Rowsell (late Special Commissioner) TIONS (concluded). By C. T. Newton THE FUTURE OF ENGLISHWOMEN: A REPLY TO MRS. A. SUTHERLAND . SOME PHASES OF EARLY RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT. By C. F. Keary 358 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE REVIVAL OF GREEK INDEPENDENCE. By the THE CROWN AND THE CABINET IN CANADA. By Sir Francis Hincks. 423 ECHOES OF THE LATE DEBATE. By M. E. Grant Duff, M.P. THE NEW PRINCIPLE OF INDUSTRY. BY George Jacob Holyoake THE LIMITS OF MODERN ART-CRITICISM. By the Rev. R. St. J. THE CHINESE AS COLONISTS. By Sir Walter Medhurst RECENT LITERATURE. By Professor Morley. NUBAR PASHA AND OUR ASIAN PROTECTORATE. By Edward Dicey ENGLAND'S MISSION. By the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone, M.P. THE BANKRUPTCY OF INDIA. By H. M. Hyndman THE 'FIASCO' OF CYPRUS. By Archibald Forbes NATIONAL INSURANCE: A CHEAP, PRACTICAL, AND POPULAR MEANS OF ABOLISHING POOR RATES. By the Rev. William Lewery RECENT ATTACKS ON POLITICAL ECONOMY. By the Right Hon. Robert THE DEMOCRACY AND FOREIGN POLICY. By H. D. Traill THE THREE COLOURS OF PRE-RAPHAELITISM. ELECTORAL FACTS. By the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone, M.P. . 955 THE AFGHAN CRISIS. By Major-General Sir Henry C. Rawlinson THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. No. XVII.-JULY 1878. THE PLACE OF CONSCIENCE IN EVOLUTION. Of all the objections and difficulties that sprang into life the moment that the doctrine of evolution was propounded for our acceptance, very few indeed (exclusive of the purely scientific ones) now give evidence of persistent vitality. Time, which, if age and experience can give wisdom, ought to be so much wiser than any of us, has consigned the greater part of them to oblivion, and evolution is taking its place, one might say, as part of the furniture of the human mind. Chief among these objections was the assertion that evolution could give no satisfactory account of the origin of morality and the genesis of conscience. Many persons, religious thinkers especially, among whom Mr. Charles Kingsley may be cited as an instance, while willing to accept any reasonable conclusion of science as to the origin and constitution of man, appeared determined to reserve conscience as something inexplicable by any effort of human thinking, and therefore as a direct gift of God to His creatures: others, again, have gone so far as to assert that the idea of duty as of divine obligation must perish, if the nature and growth of conscience could be explained, as part of the evolution of the race, by natural causation. This feeling, natural and indeed honourable, was strengthened by the fact that the explanation given of the place of conscience in evolution seemed to unprejudiced minds-seemed also to that communis sensus which is VOL. IV.-No. 17. B after all the ultimate court of arbitration in these matters-on the whole inadequate to account for the phenomenon for which explanation was desired. These persistently averred that they were conscious of something within them which no considerations derived from utility or from social life, or from the transference of external sanctions to the inward individual consciousness, at all explained or enforced. To a certain extent this feeling was itself a justification of resistance to the claims of evolution to be regarded as a sufficient history of the creation of man. The evolutionists had claimed to be able to make clear to its possessors the mystery of conscience, and if reasonable men asserted that, so far as they were concerned, the sense of mystery remained, it was clear that the last word on the subject was not yet spoken. I am certainly very far from thinking that the last word will be spoken for some time to come, but I make bold to believe that it is possible to throw further light upon the subject without at all departing from the general principle of evolution to which I have for long given such intellectual adherence as was in my power. Let us then begin by endeavouring to understand what were the precise features in the power called conscience, which seemed to intuitional thinkers to baffle and defy the explanations of the evolutionists. Their general point of view may be fairly expressed by the statement that the conscience must have had an existence prior to the conditions out of which it was supposed to have been evolved. Drawn out in detail, this statement contains the three following propositions : (1.) Conscience is instantaneous-that is, innate-in its origin, and therefore not to be accounted for by the supposition that by degrees it was impressed upon the mind from without. It bears so strong a resemblance to the other faculties, the senses and emotions, that, like them, it must have formed part of the original constitution of man. When examined it seems to testify that it is in no sense a composition, not made up of long and varied experiences, but the result of a single creative act, or at any rate the instantaneous product of certain conditions brought for the first time into relation with each other. In other words, the length of time postulated by evolutionists for the development of man is not granted them in the case of conscience. We shall see presently whether they really require it. (2.) Conscience is instantaneous-that is, intuitional-in its operations, and therefore not to be accounted for by the action and reaction of social relationships. Had there been but one man, that one man would have been able to say, 'I must do this; and, again, there must have been a sense that it was right to combine for social purposes of mutual help and comfort before men could have conceived the idea of doing so. The notion that I ought to act in a certain way towards my neighbour is, if not a primary, at least a |