3-8 EVOLUTION [CHAP. V 



Letter 242 to make a few extenuating or explanatory remarks. How 

 the mistake which I have made in speaking of greatest 

 happiness as the foundation of morals arose, is utterly un- 

 intelligible to me : any time during the last several years I 

 should have laughed such an idea to scorn. Mr. Lecky never 

 made a greater blunder, 1 and your kindness has made you let 

 me off too easily. With respect to Mr. Mill, nothing would have 

 pleased me more than to have relied on his great authority with 

 respect to the social instincts, but the sentence which I quote 

 at [Vol. I.] p. 71 ("if, as is my own belief, the moral feelings 

 are not innate, but acquired, they are not for that reason less 

 natural ") seems to me somewhat contradictory with the other 

 words which I quote, so that I did not know what to think ; 

 more especially as he says so very little about the social 

 instincts. When I speak of intellectual activity as the 

 secondary basis of conscience, I meant in my own mind 

 secondary in period of development ; but no one could be 

 expected to understand so great an ellipse. With reference 

 to your last sentence, do you not think that man might 



utilitarians, as utilitarians, there is no such quarrel as he would appear 

 to suppose. The narrowest utilitarian could say little more than Mr. 

 Darwin says (ii. 393): 'As all men desire their own happiness, praise 

 or blame is bestowed on actions and motives according as they tend to 

 this end ; and, as happiness is an essential part of the general good, the 

 Greatest Happiness principle indirectly serves as a nearly safe standard 

 of right and wrong.' It is perhaps not impertinent to suspect that the 

 faltering adverbs which we have printed in italics indicate no more 

 than the reluctance of a half-conscious convert to pure utilitarianism. 

 In another place (i. 98) he admits that 'as all wish for happiness, the 

 Greatest Happiness principle will have become a most important secondary 

 guide and object, the social instincts, including sympathy, always serving 

 as the primary impulse and guide.' This is just what Mr. Mill says, only 

 instead of calling the principle a secondary guide, he would call it a 

 standard, to distinguish it from the social impulse, in which, as much as 

 Mr. Darwin, he recognises the base and foundation." Pall Mall Gazette, 

 April I2th, 1871. 



1 In the first edition of the Descent of Man, I., p. 97, Mr. Lecky is 

 quoted as one of those who assumed that the "foundation of morality lay 

 in a form of selfishness ; but more recently in the ' greatest happiness ' 

 principle." Mr. Lecky's name is omitted in this connection in the second 

 edition, p. 120. In this edition Mr. Darwin makes it clearer that he 

 attaches most importance to the social instinct as the " primary impulse 

 and guide." 



