EVOLUTION IN PROFESSOR HUXLEY. 323 



Actions of brutes, such as those of the bee, the ant, or the beaver, however 

 materially good as regards their relation to the community to which such ani- 

 mals belong, are absolutely destitute of the most incipient degree of real i. e., 

 formal '" goodness," because unaccompanied by mental acts of conscious will 

 directed toward the fulfillment of duty. 



By the examples thus given, it was surely plain that I repre- 

 sented the formally moral character of an act to reside in the in- 

 tention wherewith it was performed, as distinguished from mere 

 good results, and also in the goodness of that intention. This was 

 made still plainer in my Quarterly article * on The Descent of 

 Man. Therein, to guard against the absurdity of supposing I 

 meant that it was necessary, in order that an action should be 

 good, for its goodness to be deliberately thought of and reflected 

 on, I said : 



An action which has ceased to be directly or indirectly deliberate has ceased 

 to be moral as a distinct act, but it is moral as the continuation of those preceding 

 deliberate acts through which the good habit was originally formed, and the 

 rapidity with which the will is directed in the case supposed may indicate the 

 number and constancy of antecedent meritorious volitions. 



Prof. Huxley reviewed f my book and this Quarterly article, 

 simultaneously and at much length, in an exceedingly interesting 

 paper entitled Mr. Darwin's Critics, which I strongly advise those 

 interested in the question to read before reading my reply to it. 

 Therein, entirely siding with Mr. Darwin, he did not hesitate to 

 say X (as to my distinction between " material " and " formal " 

 morality) : 



For myself, I utterly reject it, inasmuch as the logical consequence of the 

 adoption of any such principle is the denial of all moral value to sympathy and 

 affection. According to Mr. Mivart's axiom, the man who, seeing another strug- 

 gling in the water, leaps in at the risk of his own life to save him, does that which 

 is " destitute of the most incipient degree of real goodness," unless, as he strips 

 off his coat he, says to himself, " Now, mind, I am going to do this because it is 

 my duty, and for no other reason " ; and the most beautiful character to which 

 humanity can attain, that of the man who does good without thinking about it, 

 because he loves justice and mercy and is repelled by evil, has no claim on our 

 moral approbation. The denial that a man acts morally because he does not 

 think whether he does so or not may be put upon the same footing as the denial 

 of the title of an arithmetician to a calculating boy, because he did not know how 

 he worked out his sums. 



I wondered, and I wonder still, how Prof. Huxley could have 

 written this, he having before his eyes the passage of mine, just 

 above cited, from the article of the Quarterly Review which he 

 was criticising ! 



* See Quarterly Review, July, 1 871, p. 82 ; and also my Essays and Criticisms, 1892, ii, 49. 

 f See The Contemporary Review for 1871 ; and also his Critiques and Addresses, 1873, 

 p. 251. X Critiques and Addresses, p. 288. 



