112 COMTE TO BENJAMIN KIDD PART in 



Darwin's suggestion, a propos to the action of bees 

 in killing off drones, that, if the welfare of our species 

 had required, under any conditions, a similar practice of 

 murder, then the human conscience would undoubtedly 

 have ranked murder not among vices but among virtues. 



None of these positions seems to be peculiarly 

 connected with the theory of evolution by a process 

 of struggle for existence. They seem to belong 

 rather to evolutionism in ethics than to Darwinism 

 in ethics ; although, as positions put forward by Darwin, 

 they naturally and quite fairly received the title 

 under which Miss Cobbe attacked them. Still, any 

 thinker who believed in the continuity of life between 

 man and beast, might, if he pleased, formulate similar 

 positions to Darwin's. On the other hand, it is per- 

 fectly plain that such positions are incompatible with 

 old-fashioned intuitionalism. 



It is equally plain that the new fable of the bees is 

 also (like the old one, as generally understood) incom- 

 patible with loyalty to morals. But the attempt per se 

 to deduce morals from intellect plus social sympathy is 

 not to be so summarily rejected. It is time to recognise 

 that old-fashioned intuitionalism, with all its honest 

 loyalty to the truth and its essential right-heartedness, is 

 weak, as philosophers say, formally, and is no longer fit 

 to sustain the "struggle for existence " against subtler 

 theories. The whole method of building up mind from 

 simple elements is an illusion, whether practised by 

 intuitionalists or by naturalistic schools of moralists. 

 There is no primitive atom in mind. Every element 

 implies every other. If it is true in biology that the 

 whole is prior to the parts, how much more in psycho- 

 logy ? Moral judgments are not proved to be artificial, 

 or secondary, or subordinate, if it is shown that they 



