218 THE GENESIS OF SPECIES. [CHAP. 



"4. That Mr. Spencer's theory could not account for 

 the intuitional sacredness now attached to individual moral 

 rules and principles, without accounting a fortiori for the 

 general claim of the greatest-happiness principle over us as 

 the final moral intuition which is conspicuously contrary 

 to the fact, as not even the utilitarians themselves plead any 

 instinctive or intuitive sanction for their great principle. 



" 5. That there is no trace of positive evidence of any 

 single instance of the transformation of a utilitarian rule of 

 right into an intuition, since we find no utilitarian principle 

 of the most ancient times which is now an accepted moral 

 intuition, nor any moral intuition, however sacred, which 

 has not been promulgated thousands of years ago, and 

 which has not constantly had to stop the tide of utilitarian 

 objections to its authority and this age after age, in our 

 own day quite as much as in days gone by. . . . Surely, if 

 any thing is remarkable in the history of morality, it is 

 the anticipatory character, if I 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 gene- 

 sis of morals while referring to Mr. Button's criticisms 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 disassociated from " in- 

 terest " in the mind, though the inculcation itself originally 

 sprung from that source. This, however, when analyzed, 

 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, for that would 



