LEY. Down, April 14th [1871].

As this note requires no answer, I do not scruple to write a few lines
to say how faithful and full a resume you have given of my notions on
the moral sense in the "Pall Mall," and to make a few extenuating or
explanatory remarks. (242/1. "What is called the question of the moral
sense is really two: how the moral faculty is acquired, and how it is
regulated. Why do we obey conscience or feel pain in disobeying it? And
why does conscience prescribe one kind of action and condemn another
kind? To put it more technically, there is the question of the
subjective existence of conscience, and there is the question of its
objective prescriptions. First, why do I think it obligatory to do my
duty? Second, why do I think it my duty to do this and not do
that? Although, however, the second question ought to be treated
independently, for reasons which we shall presently suggest, the
historical answer to it, or the various grounds on which men have
identified certain sorts of conduct with duty, rather than conduct of
the opposite sorts, throws light on the other question of the conditions
of growth of the idea of duty as a sovereign and imperial director.
Mr. Darwin seems to us not to have perfectly recognised the logical
separation between the two sides of the moral sense question. For
example, he says (i. 97) that 'philosophers of the derivative school of
morals formerly assumed that the foundation of morality lay in a form of
Selfishness; but more recently in the Greatest Happiness principle.'
But Mr. Mill, to whom Mr. Darwin refers, has expressly shown that the
Greatest Happiness principle is a STANDARD, and not a FOUNDATION, and
that its validity as a standard of right and wrong action is just as
tenable by one who believes the moral sense to be innate, as by one who
holds that it is acquired. He says distinctly that the social feelings
of mankind form 'the natural basis of sentiment for utilitarian
morality.' So far from holding the Greatest Happiness principle to
be the foundation of morality, he would describe it as the forming
principle of the superstructure of which the social feelings of
mankind are the foundation. Between Mr. Darwin and utilitarians, as
utilitarians, there is no such quarrel as he would appear to suppose.
The narrowest utilitarian could say little more than Mr. Darwin says
(ii. 393): 'As all men desire their own happiness, praise or blame is
bestowed on actions and motive