Page:Blackwell 1898 Scientific method in biology.pdf/16

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SCIENTIFIC METHOD IN BIOLOGY

I.
THE GROWTH OF CONSCIENCE.

IT is through the gradual and harmonious development of intelligence with that element in our nature that we name conscience that the human race passes from lower to higher states of civilization. In pursuing our ideals, conscience is our instinctive monitor of right and wrong.

Our great naturalist, Darwin, laid down as a law of evolution that 'the moral sense, or conscience, is by far the most important of the differences between man and the lower animals. Duty—“ought”—is the most noble of all the attributes of man.'

Victor Hugo, with the prophetic insight of genius, calls conscience ‘that modicum of innate science with which each one is born.’

The growth of human conscience, in its per-