g6 Evohition and its Consequences 



past apprehended, must be influencing the man at the time, 

 whether he adverts to it or not, otherwise the action is not 

 moral. The merit of that virtue, which shows itself even in 

 the spontaneous, indeliberate actions of a good man, results 

 from the fact of previous acts having been consciously directed 

 to goodness, by which a habit has been formed. The more 

 thoroughly a man is possessed by the idea of goodness the 

 more his whole being is saturated with that idea, the more 

 will goodness show itself in all his even spontaneous actions, 

 which thus will have additional merit through their very 

 spontaneity. Now this was actually expressed in the 

 Qvxirterly Review} where of such an act it is stated that * 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 ante- 

 cedent meritorious volitions.' 



Not only, however, does Professor Huxley avoid noticing 

 this passage, but he quotes my words as to the unmeritorious 

 nature of actions ' unaccompanied by mental acts of conscious 

 will directed towards the fulfilment of duty,' so as to lead his 

 readers to believe that I say this absolutely. He takes care 

 not to let them know that here I am speaking ^ only of the 

 ' actions of brutes such as those of the bee, the ant or the 

 beaver,' which, of course, never at any period of the lives of 

 any one of these creatures were consciously directed to ' good- 

 ness' or 'duty' as an end, so that no later spontaneous 

 actions could in their case result from an acquired habit of 

 virtue, on which account I was fully justified in speaking of 

 their actions as devoid of morality. 



Professor Huxley speaks of ' the most beautiful character 

 to which humanity can attain, that of the man who does 

 good without thinking about it' (p. 468). Does he mean 



^ See ante^ p. 49. ' See Genesis of Species, p. 221, 2nd edition. 



