to morals the same argument that has been applied in this work to our sense of musical harmony, and by Mr. Wallace to the vocal organs of man.

Mr. Herbert Spencer's notions on the subject are thus expressed by himself: "To make my position fully understood, it seems needful to add that, corresponding to the fundamental propositions of a developed moral science, there have been, and still are developing in the race certain fundamental moral intuitions; and that, though these moral intuitions are the result of accumulated experiences of utility gradually organized and inherited, they have come to be quite independent of conscious experience. Just in the same way that I believe the intuition of space possessed by any living individual to have arisen from organized and consolidated experiences of all antecedent individuals, who bequeathed to him their slowly-developed nervous organizations; just as I believe that this intuition, requiring only to be made definite and complete by personal experiences, has practically become a form of thought quite independent of experience;--so do I believe that the experiences of utility, organized and consolidated through all past generations of the human race, have been producing corresponding nervous modifications which, by continued transmissions of accumulation, have become in us certain faculties of moral intuition, active emotions responding to right and wrong conduct, which have no apparent basis in the individual experiences of utility. I also hold that, just as the space intuition responds to the exact demonstrations of geometry, and has its rough conclusions interpreted and verified by them, so will moral intuitions respond to the demonstrations of moral science, and will

have their rough conclusions interpreted and verified by them."

Against this view of Mr. Herbert Spencer, Mr. Hutton objects "1. That even as regards Mr. Spencer's illustration from geometrical intuitions, his process would be totally inadequate, since you could not deduce the necessary space intuition of which he speaks from any possible accumulations of familiarity with space relations. . . . We cannot inherit more than our fathers had: no amount of

1 Mr. H. Spencer has published in the Fortnightly Review for April 1871, a paper on "Morals and Moral Sentiments," in reply to Mr. Hutton, wherein he complains that the last-named writer has misrepresented him, and says: "Mr. Hutton has so used the word 'utility,' and so interpreted it on my behalf, as to make me appear to mean that moral sentiment is formed out of conscious generalizations respecting what is beneficial and what detrimental." Mr. Spencer then goes on to say: "The experiences of utility I refer to are those which become registered, not as distinctly recognized connexions between certain kinds of acts and certain kinds of remote results, but those which become registered in the shape of associations between groups of feelings that have often recurred together, though the relation between them has not been consciously generalized." Mr. Spencer then gives some examples of emotions unconsciously resulting from previous associated sensations. The author of this book can say that he did not understand Mr. Hutton to have laid the stress, which Mr. Spencer imagines he has, upon the fact that the experiences in question were reasoned-out, consciously accumulated, and generalized. If Mr. Spencer will say his meaning is that the universe being governed by Infinite Goodness, utility and virtue ultimately coincide, and that experiences of utility and sympathetic feelings are consequently the occasions of the full development in us of moral perceptions-then it must be owned he has been strangely misunderstood and misrepresented. But if the moral perceptions are, in their ultimate analysis, mere inherited utilitarian experiences-the consciousness or unconsciousness of the generalizations is a matter of comparatively no importance whatever. It may be here added that Mr. Spencer's illustrations seem to tell against his cause. As in the cases mentioned, the intensity of emotion felt will be increased by recalling to consciousness the sense associations on which it is based, while with moral perceptions it is directly the reverse, if these are based, as Mr. Spencer asserts them to be, on unconscious utilitarian generalizations.

experience of facts, however universal, can give rise to that particular characteristic of intuitions and a priori ideas, which compels us to deny the possibility that in any other world, however otherwise different, our experience (as to space relations) could be otherwise."

"2. That the case of moral intuitions is very much stronger."

"3. That if Mr. Spencer's theory accounts for anything, it accounts not for the deepening of a sense of utility and inutility into right and wrong, but for the drying up of the sense of utility and inutility into mere inherent tendencies, which would exercise over us not more authority but less, than a rational sense of utilitarian issues."

"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 anything 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 genesis of morals while referring to Mr. Hutton'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 dissociated from "interest" in the mind, though the inculcation itself originally sprung from that source. This, however, when analysed, 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, since that would be to admit the very principle of absolute morality which Sir John combats. It must be meant, then, that authority is obeyed through fear of the consequences of disobedience, or through pleasure felt in obeying the authority which commands. In the latter case we have " pleasure" as the end, and no rudiment of the conception "duty." In the former we have fear of punishment, which appeals directly to the sense of "utility to the individual," and no amount of such a sense will produce the least germ of “ ought," which is a conception different in kind, and in which the notion of "punishment" has no place. Thus, Sir John Lubbock's explanation only concerns a mode in which the sense of " duty" may be stimulated or appealed to,

and makes no approximation to an explanation of its origin.

Could the views of Mr. Herbert Spencer, of Mr. Mill, or of Mr. Darwin on this subject be maintained, or should they come to be generally accepted, the consequences would be disastrous indeed! Were it really the case that virtue was a mere kind of “retrieving," then certainly we should have to view with apprehension the spread of intellectual cultivation, which would lead the human "retrievers" to regard from a new point of view their fetching and carrying. We should be logically compelled to acquiesce in the vociferations of some continental utilitarians, who would banish altogether the senseless words "duty" and "merit;" and then, one important influence which has aided human progress being withdrawn, we should be reduced to hope that in this case the maxim cessante causa cessat ipse effectus might through some incalculable accident fail to apply.

It is true that Mr. Spencer tries to erect a safeguard against such moral disruption, by asserting that for every iminoral act, word, or thought, each man during this life receives minute and exact retribution, and that thus a regard for individual self-interest will effectually prevent any moral catastrophe. But by what means will he enforce the acceptance of a dogma which is not only incapable of proof, but is opposed to the commonly received opinion of mankind in all ages? Ancient literature, sacred and profane, teems with protests against the successful evil-doer, and certainly, as Mr. Hutton observes:1 "Honesty must have been associated by our ancestors with many unhappy as well as many happy consequences, and

1 Macmillan's Magazine, No. 117, July 1869.