The sense of guilt and shame is to some extent displayed by a dog; but it appears to be due to domestication, and to be a secondary result of human influence. In any case, it is certainly only the higher animals that thus exhibit the germ of conscience, and the sense of shame and remorse: a sense which is most real and genuine when it is independent of externally inflicted and of expected punishment. Wild animals appear to have no such feeling, they glory in what we may picturesquely speak of as their “misdeeds,” and in running the gauntlet of danger to achieve them; and though often cruel, they are free from sin. Some savages—our own Norse forefathers among others—must on their freebooting expeditions have been in similar case. So were some of the Homeric heroes. It would be only the highest and most thoughtful among them that could rise to the sense of guilt and degradation. Only those who have risen are liable to fall. The summit of manhood is attained when evil is consciously overcome. The period before it was recognised as such has been called the golden age; but the condition of unconsciousness of evil, though joyous, is manifestly inferior to the state ultimately attainable, when paradise is regained through struggle and victory. Mere innocency, the freedom from sin by reason only of lack of perception, is not the highest state; it has been thought ideal from the point of view of inspiration and poetry, but it is a condition in which advance is necessarily limited. Sooner or later fuller knowledge and consciousness must arrive; and then ensues a long period of discipline and distress, until first a Leader and ultimately the race find their way out, through temptation and difficulty, once more to freedom and joy. A perception that the possibility of backsliding is a necessary ingredient in the making of man, and the consequent discernment of a soul of goodness in things evil, constitute a large part of the teaching of Browning: “Then welcome each rebuff That turns earth’s smoothness rough, Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand, but go! Be our joys three parts pain! Strive to hold cheap the strain; Learn, nor account the pang: dare, never grudge the throe.” And again— “We fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, Sleep to wake——” The intervening period between fall and victory, between loss of innocency and gain of righteousness, is the period with which all human history is concerned: and there is often a corresponding period in the life-history of every fully developed individual, during which he gropes his way through darkness and longs for light.