CHAP. VII.] THE BRUTE. 217 



acts are rational, I do not, of course, deny for a moment that 

 they are rational in the sense in which Mr. Babbage s ma 

 chine is calculating ; but what I do maintain is, that brutes 

 have not the power of forming judgments in the sense above 

 explained. And I still more emphatically deny that brutes 

 have any, even the very dimmest, consciousness of such ideas 

 as &quot; ought &quot; and &quot; moral excellence.&quot; And because I further 

 believe that no amount of sensible experiences can generate 

 these conceptions, I deny that any brute is even potentially 

 a moral agent. Those who credit brutes with &quot; morality,&quot; 

 do so by first eliminating from that idea all its essential 

 characteristics. 



One word now of explanation. Professor Huxley seems 

 much disturbed at my speaking of virtue as, in his view, a 

 kind of retrieving, and accuses me of imposing an &quot; injurious 

 nickname,&quot; and making a &quot;joke.&quot; Nothing could have been 

 further from my intention than either the one or the other. 

 As it happens the expression was not my own, but was picked 

 up in conversation with as thorough a Darwinian even as 

 Professor Huxley himself, who used it, as I understood, not 

 as a nickname, but as a handy mode of bringing home his 

 conceptions to my mind. I made use of it in all innocence, 

 and I still think it singularly apt and appropriate, not cer 

 tainly to express the conception &quot; virtue,&quot; but to bring home 

 the utilitarian notion of it. Professor Huxley says, &quot; What 

 if it is ? Does that make it less virtue ?&quot; I answer, unhesi 

 tatingly, that it not only makes it &quot; less virtue,&quot; but pre 

 vents it being virtue at all, unless it springs as a habit 

 acquired from self-conscious acts directed towards an end 

 recognised as good. 



It is perhaps no less decided a sensationalist than Mr. 

 Lewes who has of late made the most unequivocal de 

 claration as to the great difference a difference even in 

 kind between the highest psychical faculties of brutes, and 

 our own mental powers. He tells us : Mr. Lewes s 



admissions. 



&quot; The animal fools the cosmos, and adapts himself to it. Man feels 



