IX.] EVOLUTION AND ETHICS. 231 



may use the expression, of moral principles the intensity 

 and absoluteness with which they are laid down ages 

 before the world has approximated to the ideal thus 

 asserted." 



Sir John Lubbock, in his work on Primitive Man before 

 referred to, abandons Mr. Spencer's explanation of the 

 genesis of morals while referring to Mr. Button's criti- 

 cisms on the subject. Sir John proposes to substitute 

 " deference to authority " instead of " sense of interest " 

 as the origin of our conception of " duty," saying that 

 what has been found to be beneficial has been traditionally 

 inculcated on the young, and thus has become to be dis- 

 sociated from " interest " in the mind, though the incul- 

 cation itself originally sprung from that source. This, 

 however, when analysed, turns out to be a distinction 

 without a difference. It is nothing but utilitarianism, 

 pure and simple, after all. For it can never be intended 

 that authority is obeyed because of an intuition that it 

 should be deferred to, since that would be to admit the very 

 principle of absolute morality which Sir John combats. 

 It must be meant, then, that authority is obeyed through 

 fear of the consequences of disobedience, or through 

 pleasure felt in obeying the authority which commands. 

 In the latter case we have " pleasure " as the end, and no 

 rudiment of the conception " duty." In the former we 

 have fear of punishment, which appeals directly to the 

 sense of "utility to the individual," and no amount of 

 such' a sense will produce the least germ of " ought," 

 which is a conception different in kind, and in which the 

 notion of " punishment " has no place. Thus, Sir John 

 Lubbock's explanation only concerns a mode in which the 

 sense of " duty " may be stimulated or appealed to, 



