On the Genesis of Species

in's speculation as to the origin of the abhorrence of incest.-Cause assigned by him insufficient.-Care of the aged and infi

nd "formal."-No ground for believing that formal morality exists in brutes.-Evidence that it does exist in savages.-Facility with which savages may be misunderstood.-Obj

ly reticent, and indeed he himself is now not only about to produce a work on man (in which this question must be considered), but he has distinctly announced the extension of the application of his theory to the very phenomena in question. He says:[202] "In the distant future I see open fields for far more important researches. Psychology will b

that in spite of the great present difference between the ideas "useful" and "right," yet that they are, ne

uals so preserved have, they say, come to inherit such a liking and such useful habits of mind, and that at last (finding this inherited tendency thus existing in themselves, distinct from their tendency to conscious self-gratification) they have become apt to regard it as fundamentally distinct, innate, and independent of all experience. In fact, according to this school, the idea of "right" is only the result of the gradual accretion of useful predilections

e crime of incest in abhorrence;" but he considers that this abhorrence has probably arisen by "Natural Selection," the ill effects of close interbreeding causing the less numerous and less healthy offspring of incestuous unions to disappear by degrees, in favour of the descendants

n of parents who possessed a similar inherited aversion might result in phenomena quite other than the augmentation of such aversion, even if the two aversions should be altogether similar; while, very probably, they might be so different in their nature as to tend to neutralize each other. Besides, the union of parents so similarly emotional would be rare indeed amongst savages, where marriages would be owing to almost anything rather than to congeniality of mind between the spouses. Mr. Wallace tells us,[205] that they choose their wives for "rude health and physical beauty," and this is just what might be naturally supposed. Again, we must bear in mind the necessity there is that many individuals should be similarly and simultaneously affected with this aversion from consanguineous unions; as we have seen in the second chapter, how infallibly variations presented by only a few individuals, tend to be eliminated by mere force of numbers. Mr. Darwin indeed would throw back this aversion, if possibl

gid political economy referred to, is meant that destruction and utilization of "useless mouths" which Mr. Darwin himself describes in his highly interesting "Journal of Researches."[207] He says: "It is certainly true, that when pressed in winter by hunger, they kill and devour their old women before they kill their dogs. The boy being asked why they did this, answered, 'Doggies catch otters, old women no.' They often run away into the mountains, but they are pursued by the men and brought back to the slaughter-house at their own firesides." Mr. Edward Bartlett, w

by no means all that has to be accounted for. Devotion to the whole human race, and devotion to God-in the form of asceticism-have been and are very generally recognized as "good;" and the Author contends that it is simply impossible to conceive that such ideas and sanctions should have been developed by "Natural Selection" alone, from only that degree of unselfishness necessary for the preservation of brutally barbar

ch he nevertheless endeavours to identify. Mr. John Stuart Mill, in his examination of "Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy," says,[208] if "I am informed that the world is ruled by a being whose attributes are infinite, but what they are we cannot learn, nor what the principles of his government, except that 'the highest human morality which we are capable of conceiving' does not sanction them; convince me of it, and I will bear my fate as I may. But when I am told that

rofesses to have eliminated any fundamental distinction between the "right" and the "expedient." For if an action is morally good, and to be done, merely in proportion to the amount of pleasure it secures, and morally bad and to be avoided as tending to misery,

with him. Therefore, he must mean that it would be well for all to accept (on the hypothesis above

neighbour, so that his refusal reposes simply on his perception of the immorality of the requisition. It is al

he recognition of an "absolute morality," he can justify so utter and final an

dea of duty, but we see that the very fact of an act not being beneficial to us makes it the more praiseworthy, while gain tends to diminish the merit of an action. Yet this idea, "right," thus excluding, as it does, all reference to utility or pleasure, has nevertheless to be constructed and evolved from utility and pleasure, and ultimately from pleasurable sensations, if we are to accept pure

ut also as good in two different senses: (1) materially moral acts, and (2) acts which are formally moral. The first are acts good in themselves, as acts, apart from any intention of the agent which may or may not have been directed towards "right." The second are acts which are good not only in themselves, as acts, but also in the deliberate intention of the agent who recognizes his actions as being "right." Thus acts may be materially moral or immoral, in a very high degree, without being in the least formally so. For example, a person m

of the most incipient degree of real, i.e. formal "goodness," because unaccompanied by mental acts of conscious will directed towards the fulfilment of duty. Apology is due for thus stating s

tes of any actions simulating morality which are not explicable by the fear of punishment, by the hope of pleasure, or by personal affection. No sign of moral reprobation is given by any brute, and yet had such existed in germ throug

insects or birds carefully tended by young which benefited by their experience, such acts would not indicate even the faintest rudiment of real, i.e. formal, morality. "Natural Selection" would, of course, often lead to the prevalence of acts beneficia

rnal of Researches"[210] before quoted, bearing witness to the existence of moral reprobation on the part of the Fuegians, he says: "The nearest approach to religious feeling which I heard of was shown by York Minster (a Fuegia

whom he came in contact. In one case,[211] a Papuan who had been paid in advance for bird-skins and who had not been able to fulfil his contract before Mr. Wallace was on the point of st

familiar and uninterrupted intercourse with natives, his opinion and testimony should surely carry with it great weight. He has informed the Author that he found a strongly marked and widely diffused modesty, in sexual matters, amongst all the tribes with which he came in contact. I

mely difficult it is to enter into the ideas and feelings of an alien race. If in the nineteenth century a French theatrical audience can witness with acquiescent approval, as a type of English manners and ideas, the representation of a marquis who sells his wife at Smithfield, &c. &c., it is surely no wonder if the ideas of a tribe of newly visited savages should be more or less misunderstood. To enter into such ideas requires long and

he effects which prejudice, interest, passion, habit, or even, indirectly, physical conditions, may have upon our moral perceptions. Thus Sir John Lubbock speaks[213] of certain Feejeeans, who, according to the testimony of Mr. Hunt,[214] have the custom of piously choking thei

allible and universal internal code,-the illustration would be to the point. But all that need be contended for is that the intellect perceives not only truth, but also a quality of "h

could no more be reduced and modified by discussion than constitutional differences of hearing or of vision. And, as the quality of moral good either must or must not exist in every important operation of the will, we should discern its presence or absence separately in each; and even though we never had the conception of more than one insulated action, we should be able to pronounce upon its character. This, however, we have plainly no power to do. Every mo

, since an action highly immoral in us might be one exceedingly virtuous in him-being the high

ere is any infallible internal guide as to all the complex actions which present themselves for choice. The princ

courses of action is the less objectionable. This no more invalidates the truth of moral principles than does the difficulty of a mathem

be said of our perception of the true relations of physical facts one to another. An eager wish for marriage has led many a man to ex

moral views may also be expected to be so influenced, and this in a higher degree because they so often run counter to our desires. A bottle or two of wine may make a sensible object appear double; what wonder, then, if our moral pe

s however, as before said, fully conceded by Mr. Herbert Spencer, al

n recently combated by Mr. Richard Holt Hutton in a

als the same argument that has been applied in this work to our sen

of space possessed by any living individual to have arisen from organized and consolidated experiences of all antecedent individuals, who bequeathed to him their slowly developed nervous organizations; just as I believe that this intuition, requiring only to be made definite and complete by personal experiences, has practically become a form of thought quite independent of experience;-so do I believe that the experiences of utility, organized and consolidated through all past generations of the human race, have been producing corresponding nervous

ry space intuition of which he speaks from any possible accumulations of familiarity with space relations.... We cannot inherit more than our fathers had: no amount of experience of facts, however universal, can give rise

moral intuitions is

nd inutility into right and wrong, but for the drying up of the sense of utility and inutility into mere inherent

out accounting a fortiori for the general claim of the greatest happiness principle over us as the final moral intuition--which is conspic

l intuition, however sacred, which has not been promulgated thousands of years ago, and which has not constantly had to stop the tide of utilitarian objections to its authority-and this age after age, in our own day quite as much as in days gone by.... Surely, i

that source. This, however, when analysed, turns out to be a distinction without a difference. It is nothing but utilitarianism, pure and simple, after all. For it can never be intended that authority is obeyed because of an intuition that it should be deferred to, for that would be to admit the very principle of absolute morality which Sir John combats. It must be meant, then, that authority is obeyed through fear of the consequences of disobedience, or through pleasure felt in obeying the authority which commands. In the lat

have to view with apprehension the spread of intellectual cultivation, which would lead the human "retrievers" to regard from a new point of view their fetching and carrying. We should be logically compelled to acquiesce in the vociferations of some continental utilitarians, who would

force the acceptance of a dogma which is not only incapable of proof, but is opposed to the commonly received opinion of mankind in all ages? Ancient literature, sacred and profane, teems with protests against the successful evil-doer, and certainly, as Mr. Hutton observes,[217] "Honesty must have been associated by our ancestors with m

y as to the events of their own lives; and the Author,

rious historians; let all the excuses possible be made for his predecessor, Lewis the Fifteenth, and also for Madame de Pompadour, can it be pretended that there are grounds for affirming that the vices of the two former so far exceeded those of the latter,

nst a superstitious and deluding dogma may stand,-a dogma which may, like any other dogma, be vehemently asserted and maintained, but wh

m-1. That "Natural Selection" could not have produced, from the sensations of pleasure and pain experienced by brutes, a higher degree of morali

erness to the aged and infirm which actually exists, but would rather have per

ations the noble virtue of a Marcus Aurelius, o

have given rise to the maxi

al and formal morality is one altog

Mr. Herbert Spencer. And, finally, that the solution of that origin proposed recently by Sir John Lubbock is a mere version of simple u

of any moral conception, similar cases also may easily be found in highly civilized communities. Such cases tell no more against moral intuitions than do cases of colour-blindness or idiotism tell against sight and reason. We have thus a most important and conspicuous fact, the existence of which is fatal to the theory of "Natural Selection," as put forward of late by Mr. Darwin and his most ardent foll