18701882] JOHN MORLEY 327 



But I have much cause to apologise for the length of this Letter 241 

 ill-expressed letter. My sole excuse is the extraordinary 

 interest which I have felt in your review, and the pleasure 

 which I have experienced in observing the points which have 

 attracted your attention. I must say one word more. Having 

 kept the subject of sexual selection in my mind for very many 

 years, and having become more and more satisfied with it, I 

 feel great confidence that as soon as the notion is rendered 

 familiar to others, it will be accepted, at least to a much 

 greater extent than at present. With sincere respect and 

 thanks. . . . 



To John Morley. Letter 242 



Down, April I4th [1871]. 



As this note requires no answer, I do not scruple to write 

 a few lines to say how faithful and full a resume you have 

 given of my notions on the moral sense : in the Pall Mall, and 



1 "What is called the question of the moral sense is really two : how 

 the moral faculty is acquired, and how it is regulated. Why do we obey 

 conscience or feel pain in disobeying it ? And why does conscience 

 prescribe one kind of action and condemn another kind ? To put it more 

 technically, there is the question of the subjective existence of conscience, 

 and there is the question of its objective prescriptions. First, why do I 

 think it obligatory to do my duty ? Second, why do I think it my duty to 

 do this and not do that ? Although, however, the second question ought 

 to be treated independently, for reasons which we shall presently suggest, 

 the historical answer to it, or the various grounds on which men have 

 identified certain sorts of conduct w-ith duty, rather than conduct of the 

 opposite sorts, throws light on the other question of the conditions of 

 growth of the idea of duty as a sovereign and imperial director. Mr. 

 Darwin seems to us not to have perfectly recognised the logical separation 

 between the two sides of the moral sense question. For example, he says 

 (i. 97) that 'philosophers of the derivative school of morals formerly 

 assumed that the foundation of morality lay in a form of Selfishness ; but 

 more recently in the Greatest Happiness principle.' But Mr. Mill, to 

 whom Mr. Darwin refers, has expressly shown that the Greatest Happiness 

 principle is a standard, and not a foundation, and that its validity as a 

 standard of right and wrong action is just as tenable by one who believes 

 the moral sense to be innate, as by one who holds that it is acquired. 

 He says distinctly that the social feelings of mankind form ' the natural 

 basis of sentiment for utilitarian morality.' So far from holding the 

 Greatest Happiness principle to be the foundation of morality, he would 

 describe it as the forming principle of the superstructure of which the 

 social feelings of mankind are the foundation. Between Mr. Darwin and 



