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that its originating source is likewise of a moral character. This argument, however, appears to me of a questionable character, seeing that, for anything we can tell to the contrary, the moral sense may have been given to, or developed in, man simply on account of its utility to the species--just in the same way as teeth in the shark or poison in the snake. If so, the occurrence of the moral sense in man would merely furnish one other instance of the intellectual, as distinguished from the moral, nature of God; and there seems to be in itself no reason why we should take any other view. The mere fact that to _us_ the moral sense seems such a great and holy thing, is doubtless (under any view) owing to its importance to the well-being of our species. In itself, or as it appears to other possible beings intellectual like ourselves, but existing under unlike conditions, the moral sense of man may be regarded as of no more significance than the social instincts of bees. More particularly may this consideration apply to the case of a Mind existing, according to the theological theory of things, wholly beyond the pale of anything analogous to those social relations out of which, according to the scientific theory of evolution, the moral sense has been developed in ourselves[28]. The truth is that in this matter natural theologians begin by assuming that the First Cause, if intelligent, _must_ be moral; and then they are blinded to the strictly logical weakness of the argument whereby they endeavour to sustain their assumption. For aught that we can tell to the contrary, it may be quite as 'anthropomorphic' a notion to attribute morality to God as it would be to attribute those capacities for sensuous enjoyment with which the Greeks endowed their divinities. The Deity may be as high above the one as the other--or rather perhaps we may say as much external to the one as to the other. Without being supra-moral, and still less immoral, He may be un-moral: our ideas of morality may have no meaning as applied to Him. But if we go thus far in one direction, I think, _per contra_, it must in consistency be allowed that the argument from the constitution of the human mind acquires more weight when it is shifted from the moral sense to the religious instincts. For, on the one hand, these instincts are not of such obvious use to the species as are those of morality; and, on the other hand, while they are unquestionably very general,
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