Sec. 22. The question we have to determine is, What evidence have we to show that the moral part of man was created in the image of God; and if there is any such evidence, what counter-existence is there to show that the moral existence of man may be due to natural causes? In deciding this question, just as in deciding any other question of a purely scientific character, we must be guided in our examination by the Law of Parcimony; we must not assume the agency of supernatural causes if we can discover the agency of natural causes; neither must we merge the supposed mystery directly into the highest mystery, until we are quite sure that it does not admit of being proximately explained by the action of proximate influences. Now, whether or not Mr. Darwin's theory as to the origin and development of the moral sense be considered satisfactory, there can, I think, be very little doubt in any impartial mind which duly considers the subject, that in _some way or other_ the moral sense has been evolved. The body of scientific evidence which has now been collected in favour of the general theory of evolution is simply overwhelming; and in the presence of so large an analogy, it would require a vast amount of contradictory evidence to remove the presumption that human conscience, like everything else, has been evolved. Now, for my own part, I am quite unable to distinguish any such evidence, while, on the other hand, in support of the _a priori_ presumption that conscience has been evolved, I cannot conceal from myself that there is a large amount of _a posteriori_ confirmation. I am quite unable to distinguish anything in my sense of right and wrong which I cannot easily conceive to have been brought about during the evolution of my intelligence from lower forms of psychical life. On the contrary, everything that I can find in my sense of right and wrong is precisely what I should expect to find on the supposition of this sense having been moulded by the progressive requirements of social development. Read in the light of evolution, Conscience, in its every detail, is deductively explained. And, as though there were not sufficient evidence of this kind to justify the conclusion drawn from the theory of evolution, the doctrine of utilitarianism--separately conceived and separately worked out on altogether independent grounds--the doctrine of utilitarianism comes in with irresistible force to confirm that _a priori_ conclusion by the widest and most unexceptionable of inductions.[15]