CHAP. XI "DARWINISM IN MORALS" 121 



to it, would sufficiently explain the origin of moral 

 ideas. This shocked Miss Cobbe's intuitionalist pre- 

 possessions ; she could not bear to see moral ideas 

 analysed, as if they were compounded of other, and 

 these non-moral, elements. But above all, Miss Cobbe 

 was aroused to natural indignation by Darwin's sug- 

 gestion, a prop os to the action of bees in killing off 

 drones, that, if the welfare of our species had re- 

 quired, under any conditions, a similar practice of 

 murder, then the human conscience would undoubt- 

 edly have ranked murder not among vices but among 

 virtues. 



None of these positions seems to be peculiarly 

 connected with the theory of evolution by a process 

 of struggle for existence. They seem to belong 

 rather to evolutionism in ethics than to Darwinism 

 in ethics; although, as positions put forward by 

 Darwin, they naturally and quite fairly received the 

 title under which Miss Cobbe attacked them. Still, 

 any thinker who believed in the continuity of life 

 between man and beast, might, if he pleased, formu- 

 late similar positions to Darwin's. On the other 

 hand, it is perfectly plain that such positions are 

 incompatible with old-fashioned intuitionalism. 



It is equally plain that the new fable of the bees 

 is also (like the old one, as generally understood) 

 incompatible with loyalty to morals. But the attempt 

 per se to deduce morals from intellect plus social sym- 

 pathy is not to be so summarily rejected. It is time 

 to recognise that old-fashioned intuitionalism, with 

 all its honest loyalty to the truth and its essential 

 right-heartedness, is weak, as philosophers say, for- 

 mally, and is no longer fit to sustain the " struggle 



