Let us look a little more closely at the matter, for the difficulty of explaining morality forms one of the greatest obstacles to the acceptance of the Darwinian account of the descent of man.  What do we mean by a moral being?  Manifestly, a moral being is one who is capable of reflecting on his past actions and their motives, and of approving of some while he disapproves of others.  Man is the one being who certainly deserves this designation, though attempts have recently been made to show that a rudimentary morality may be traced in some of the lower animals.  In the fourth chapter of the book before us, Darwin undertakes to demonstrate that the moral sense follows,—­first, from the enduring and ever-present nature of the social instincts; secondly, from man’s appreciation of the approbation and disapprobation of his fellows; and, thirdly, from the high activity of his mental faculties, with past impressions extremely vivid; in these latter respects he differs from the lower animals.  Owing to this condition of mind, man cannot avoid looking both backwards and forwards, and comparing past impressions.  Hence, after some temporary desire or passion has mastered his social instincts, he reflects and compares the now weakened impression of such past impulses with the ever-present social instincts; and he then feels that sense of dissatisfaction which all unsatisfied instincts leave behind them, and resolves to act differently for the future.  This dissatisfaction Darwin would identify with conscience.  Any instinct permanently stronger or more enduring than another gives rise to a feeling which we express by saying that it ought to be obeyed.  Darwin suggests that a pointer dog, if able to reflect on his past conduct, would say to himself I ought (as indeed we say of him) to have pointed at that hare, and not have yielded to the passing temptation of hunting it.

The belief in God has often been advanced as not only the greatest, but the most decisive, of all the distinctions between man and the lower animals.  Darwin brings forward in the book before us a quantity of reasons for holding it to be impossible that this belief is innate or instinctive in man.  In some races of men, for instance, we encounter a total want of the idea of God.  On the other hand, a belief in all-pervading spiritual agencies seems to be universal, and apparently follows from a considerable advance in man’s reason, and from a still greater advance in the faculties of imagination, curiosity, and wonder.  “I am aware,” says Darwin, “that the assumed instinctive belief in God has been used by many persons as an argument for His existence.  But this is a rash argument, as we should thus be compelled to believe in the existence of many cruel and malignant spirits only a little more powerful than man; for the belief in them is far more general than in a beneficent deity.  The idea of a universal and beneficent Creator does not seem to arise in the mind of man until he has been elevated by long-continued culture.”