IX.] EVOLUTION AND ETHICS. 221 



future reception of a good legacy. Another may, in the 

 dark, shoot his own father, taking him to be an assassin, 

 and so commit what is materially an act of parricide, 

 though formally it is only an act of self-defence of more or 

 less culpable rashness. A woman may innocently, because 

 ignorantly, marry a married man, and so commit a material 

 act of adultery. She may discover the facts, and persist, 

 and so make her act formal also. 



Actions of brutes, such as those of the bee, the ant, or 

 the beaver, however materially good as regards their rela- 

 tion to the community to which such animals belong, are 

 absolutely destitute of the most incipient degree of real, 

 i.e. formal "goodness," because unaccompanied by mental 

 acts of conscious will directed towards the fulfilment of 

 duty. Apology is due for thus stating so elementary a 

 distinction, 1 but the statement is not superfluous, for con- 

 fusion of thought, resulting from confounding together 

 these very distinct things, is unfortunately far from 

 uncommon. 



Thus, some Darwinians assert that the germs of morality 

 exist in brutes, and we have seen that Mr. Darwin himself 

 speculates on the subject as regards the highest apes. It 

 may safely be affirmed, however, that there is no trace in 

 . brutes of any actions simulating morality which are not 

 explicable by the fear of punishment, by the hope of 

 pleasure, or by personal affection. No sign of moral re- 

 probation is given by any brute, and yet had such existed 

 in germ through Darwinian abysses of past time, some 

 evidence of its existence must surely have been rendered 

 perceptible through " survival of the fittest " in other forms 



1 Since the publication of Mr. Darwin's "Descent of Man," it lias become 

 evident that this apology was an unnecessary one. 



