210 THE GENESIS OF SPECIES. [Chap. 



ccelwn could never have been excogitated, still less have 

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

 to suggest even an approach toward an explanation of the 

 Jirst 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 

 dilVerent senses : (1) tnaierially moral acts, and (2) acts 

 which ^xQ fonnally moral. 'I'iie first are acts good in them- 

 selves, as acts^ apart from any intention of tiie agent which 

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

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

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

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

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

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

 may tend and minister to a sick man with scrupulous care 

 and exactuess, having in view all the time nothing but tlie 

 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 imioccntly, because 

 ignorantly, marry a married man, and so connnit 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 aniuials belong, arc 

 absolutely destitute of tlic most incipient degree of real, i. e., 

 formal " goodness," because unaccompanied by mental acts 

 of conscious will directed toward the fullUmcnt 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 imcommon. 



