148 COMTE TO BENJAMIN KIDD PART in 



only limited or modified. Competition does not go on 

 within the social group ; " dog does not bite dog " ; but 

 the groups still compete with each other. Morality and 

 immorality are both of them natural products. Evolu- 

 tion yields them both ; they are both with us to this 

 day in the strangest blending. Darwin, being neither 

 philosopher, nor moralist, but a student of facts and a 

 seeker of natural laws, was content to publish his views 

 of origin and process without inquiring very deeply into 

 the probable consequences of such views in their bearing 

 upon morality. 



The first objection taken was by Miss Cobbe, speak- 

 ing as an intuitionalist. She complained that morality 

 had no more sacredness, no more binding force, if it 

 were true that conscience was a simple remainder of 

 brute tendencies, useful to the species, but having no 

 ideal sanction. That objection we have ventured to 

 overrule. Provided only a sufficiently deep view of 

 intelligence or reason be held provided we see clearly 

 that reason transforms, perfects, makes new, what it 

 seems to inherit from brute nature we need not be 

 afraid for morality though it should universally be 

 taught that morality came into being by slow and 

 gradual fashioning of brute impulse. 



A somewhat different objection is in the view of 

 Huxley and Drummond, not the origin of conscience, 

 not the inheritance of moral instinct from brutes, but 

 the swamping (as it were) of moral instinct in the great 

 current of cosmic process, regarded as a struggle for 

 existence. If all nature struggles blindly and selfishly, 

 what should man be but a " strugforlifeur " like the 

 villain in Daudet's novel ? If reason, so we may 

 interpret the difficulty in the light of Mr. Benjamin 

 Kidd's work, the destined goal of our present study if 



