IX.] EVOLUTION AND ETHICS. 217 



to be made definite and complete by personal experiences, 

 has practically become a form of thought quite independent 

 of experience; so do I believe that the experiences of 

 utility, organized and consolidated through all past gen- 

 erations of the human race, have been producing corre- 

 sponding nervous modifications which, by continued trans- 

 missions and 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 demonstrations 

 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 have their rough 

 conclusions interpreted and verified by them." 



Against this view of Mr. Herbert Spencer, Mr. Button 

 objects : " 1. That even as regards Mr. Spencer's illustra- 

 tion from geometrical intuitions, his process would be 

 totally inadequate, since you could not deduce the neces- 

 sary space intuition of which he speaks from any possible 

 accumulations of familiarity with space relations. . . . We 

 cannot inherit more than than our fathers had: no amount 

 of experience of facts, however universal, can give rise to 

 that particular characteristic of intuitions and a priori 

 ideas, which compels us to deny the possibility that in any 

 other world, however otherwise different, our experience (as 

 to space relations) could be otherwise. 



"2. That the case of moral intuitions is very much 

 stronger. 



" 3. That if Mr. Spencer's theory accounts for any thing, 

 it accounts not for the deepening of a sense of utility and 

 inutility into right and wrong, but for the drying up of the 

 sense of utility and inutility into mere inherent tendencies, 

 which would exercise over us not more authority but less, 

 than a rational sense of utilitarian issues. 

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