THE EVOLUTION OF CONSCIENCE AS A PHASE OF SOCIOLOGY.
CONSCIENCE is usually looked upon as the crowning feature of evolution. But its history is interwoven by subtle threads with many other phases of our social or spiritual life. It is connected intimately with the development of political institutions, and it is very closely identified with the rise of the religious conscious- ness, or the story of religion. It is involved, too, with the growth of what is called the sympathy side of human nature.
Somehow the opinion has lingered on, and held its own with considerable tenacity, that in the growth of the moral sense there is a certain element of mystery. Many thinkers at the present time deny all this, and claim that the new standpoint of evolution not only describes the stages in the growth of con- science, but gives an explanation as to how it arose. They are not ready, in a word, to admit that anything essentially new has appeared in what we term the ethical impulses. As we are all aware, the schools in ethical philosophy are divided on this point, and may perhaps never come to an agreement.
For my own part, I am inclined to hold on to the element of mystery here, although not disposed to insist that others should accept it. All my study in evolution thus far has not convinced me that a full explanation has been found for the appearance or development of conscience. It is one thing to describe the stages of its growth or to trace the steps according to which it has manifested itself. But it is another thing to account for its appearance.
It strikes me that we have a full explanation of a process only when the mind is able to anticipate what is coming, by a knowl- edge of what has gone before, according to a series of laws or relationships already discovered. The " struggle for existence," in a sense, is such a law among organisms in the animal king- dom. By a knowledge of this law one could prophesy that the strongest and best-proportioned muscular system would triumph,
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