210 THE GENESIS OF SPECIES. [CHAP. 



ccelum could never have been excogitated, still less have 

 have found a wide-spread acceptance ; that it is impotent 

 to suggest even an approach toward an explanation of the 

 first beginning of the idea of " right." It need hardly be 

 remarked that acts may be distinguished not only as 

 pleasurable, useful, or beautiful, but also as good in two 

 different senses : (1) materially moral acts, and (2) acts 

 which are formally moral. The first are acts good in them- 

 selves, as acts, apart from any intention of the agent which 

 may or may not have been directed toward " right." The 

 second are acts which are good not only in themselves, as 

 acts, but also in the deliberate intention of the agent who 

 recognizes his actions as being " right." Thus acts may be 

 materially moral or immoral, in a very high degree, with- 

 out being in the least formally so. For example, a person 

 may tend and minister to a sick man with scrupulous care 

 and exactness, having in view all the time nothing but the 

 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- 

 lations 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 toward the fulfilment of duty. 

 Apology is due for thus stating so elementary a distinction, 

 but the statement is not superfluous, for confusion of thought, 

 resulting from confounding together these very distinct 

 things, is unfortunately far from uncommon. 



