EXPERIENCES OF UTILITY. 17 



supposes me to think that men having, in past times, come 

 to see that truthfulness was useful, &quot; the habit of approving 

 truth-speaking and fidelity to engagements, which was 

 first based on this ground of utility, became so rooted, 

 that the utilitarian ground of it was forgotten, and. we find 

 ourselves springing to the belief in truth-speaking and 

 fidelity to engagements from an inherited tendency.&quot; 

 Similarly throughout, Mr. Hutton has so used the word 

 &quot; utility,&quot; and so interpreted it on my behalf, as to make 

 me appear to mean that moral sentiment is formed out 

 of conscious generalizations respecting what is beneficial 

 and what detrimental. Were such my hypothesis, his 

 criticisms would be very much to the point ; but as such 

 is not my hypothesis, they fall to the ground. The ex 

 periences of utility I refer to are those which become 

 registered, not as distinctly-recognized connections be 

 tween certain kinds of acts and certain kinds of remote 

 results, but those which become registered in the shape 

 of associations between groups of feelings that have often 

 recurred together, though the relation between them has 

 not been* consciously generalized associations the origin 

 of which may be as little perceived as is the origin 

 of the pleasure given by the sounds of a rookery ; but 

 which, nevertheless, have arisen in the course of daily 

 converse with things, and serve as incentives or de 

 terrents. 



In the paragraph which Mr. Hutton has extracted 

 from my letter to Mr. Mill, I have indicated an analogy 

 between those effects of emotional experiences out of 

 which I believe moral sentiments have been developed, 

 and those effects of intellectual experiences out of which 

 I believe space-intuitions have been developed. Kightly 

 considering that the first of these hypotheses cannot stand 

 if the last is disproved, Mr. Hutton has directed part of 



