1892 THE BASIS OF MORALITY 



325 



there is no need of any other motive. What they want is knowl- 

 edge of the things they may do and must leave undone, if the 

 welfare of society is to be attained. Good people so often forget 

 this that some of them occasionally require hanging almost as 

 much as the bad. 



If you ask why the moral inner sense is to be (under due 

 limitations) obeyed; why the few who are steered by it move 

 the mass in whom it is weak? I can only reply by putting 

 another question — Why do the few in whom the sense of beauty 

 is strong — Shakespere, Raffaele, Beethoven, carry the less en- 

 dowed multitude away? But they do, and always will. People 

 who overlook that fact attend neither to history nor to what 

 goes on about them. 



Benjamin Fsanklin was a shrewd, excellent, kindly man. I 

 have a great respect for him. The force of genial common- 

 sense respectability could no further go. George Fox was the 

 very antipodes of all this, and yet one understands how he came 

 to move the world of his day, and Franklin did not. 



As to whether we can all fulfil the moral law, I should say, 

 hardly any of us. Some of us are utterly incapable of fulfilling 

 its plainest dictates. As there are men born physically cripples 

 and intellectually idiots, so there are some who are moral crip- 

 ples and idiots, and can be kept straight not even by punish- 

 ment. For these people there is nothing but shutting up, or 

 extirpation. — I am, yours faithfully, T. H. Huxley. 



The peaceful aspect of this article seems to have veiled 

 to most readers the unbroken nature of his defence, and he 

 writes to his son-in-law, the Hon. John Collier, suggesting 

 an alteration in the title of the essay : — 



Hodeslea, Eastbourne, AW. 8, 1892. 



My dear Jack — It is delightful to find a reader who "twigs" 

 every point as acutely as your brother has done. I told some- 

 body — was it you ? — I rather wished the printer would substi- 

 tute for e in Irenicon. So far as I have seen any notices, the 

 British critic (what a dull ass he is) appears to have been seri- 

 ously struck by my sweetness of temper. 



I sent you the article yesterday, so you will judge for your- 

 self. — With love, ever yours affectionately, 



T. H. Huxley. 



You should see the place I am claiming for Art in the Uni- 

 versity. I do believe something will grow out of my plan, which 



