1S70— 1882] LORD KELVIN'S ADDRESS 329 



have retrograded in his parental, marriage, and other instincts Letter 242 

 without having retrograded in his social instincts ? and I do 

 not think that there is any evidence that man ever existed as 

 a non-social animal. I must add that I have been very glad 

 to read your remarks on the supposed case of the hive-bee : it 

 affords an amusing contrast with what Miss Cobbc has written 

 in the Theological Review} Undoubtedly the great principle 

 of acting for the good of all the members of the same com- 

 munity, and therefore the good of the species, would still have 

 held sovereign sway. 



To J. D. Hooker. Letter 243 



Sir Joseph Hooker wrote (Aug. 5th, 1S71) to Darwin about Lord 

 Kelvin's Presidential Address at the Edinburgh meeting of the British 

 Association : " It seems to me to be very able indeed ; and what a good 

 notion it gives of the gigantic achievement of mathematicians and 

 physicists ! — it really made one giddy to read of them. I do not think 

 Huxley will thank him for his reference to him as a positive unbeliever 

 in spontaneous generation — these mathematicians do not seem to me 

 to distinguish between un-belief and a-belief. I know no other name for 

 the state of mind that is produced under the term scepticism. I had 

 no idea before that pure Mathematics had achieved such wonders in 

 practical science. The total absence of any allusion to Tyndall's labours, 

 even when comets are his theme, seems strange to me." 



Haredene, Albury, Guildford, Aug. 6th [1871]. 

 I have read with greatest interest Thomson's address ; 

 but you say so exactly and fully all that I think, that you 

 have taken all the words from my mouth ; even about Tyndall. 

 It is a gain that so wonderful a man, though no naturalist, 

 should become a convert to evolution ; Huxley, it seems, 

 remarked in his speech to this effect. I should like to know 



1 Mr. Darwin says {Descent of Man, Ed. 1., Vol. I., p. 73 ; Ed. II., 

 p. 99), "that if men lived like bees our unmarried females would think it 

 a sacred duty to kill their brothers." Miss Cobbe remarks on this " that 

 the principles of social duty would be reversed" {Theological Review, 

 April 1872). Mr. Morley, on the other hand, says of Darwin's assertion, 

 that it is "as reassuring as the most absolute of moralists could desire. 

 For it is tantamount to saying that the foundations of morality, the 

 distinctions of right and wrong, are deeply laid in the very conditions of 

 social existence ; that there is in face of these conditions a positive 

 and definite difference between the moral and the immoral, the virtuous 

 and the vicious, the right and the wrong, in the actions of individuals 

 partaking of that social existence." 



