228 THE GENESIS OF SPECIES. [CHAP. 



to morals the same argument that has been applied 

 in this work to our sense of musical harmony, and by 

 Mr. Wallace to the vocal organs of man. 



Mr. Herbert Spencer's notions on the subject are thus 

 expressed by himself: "To make my position fully under- 

 stood, it seems needful to add that, corresponding to the 

 fundamental propositions of a developed moral science, 

 there have been, and still are developing in the race 

 certain fundamental moral intuitions ; and that, though 

 these moral intuitions are the result of accumulated ex- 

 periences of utility gradually organized and inherited, 

 they have come to be quite independent of conscious 

 experience. Just in the same way that I believe the 

 intuition of space possessed by any living individual to 

 have arisen from organized and consolidated experiences 

 of all antecedent individuals, who bequeathed to him 

 their slowly-developed nervous organizations ; just as I 

 believe that this intuition, requiring only to be made 

 definite and complete by personal experiences, has prac- 

 tically become a form of thought quite independent of 

 experience ; so do I believe that the experiences of 

 utility, organized and consolidated through all past 

 generations of the human race, have been producing 

 corresponding nervous modifications which, by continued 

 transmissions of accumulation, have become in us certain 

 faculties of moral intuition, active emotions responding to 

 right and wrong conduct, which have no apparent basis in 

 the individual experiences of utility. I also hold that, 

 just as the space intuition responds to the exact demon- 

 strations of geometry, and has its rough conclusions 

 interpreted and verified by them, so will moral intuitions 

 respond to the demonstrations of moral science, and will 



