in his parental, marriage, and other
instincts without having retrograded in his social instincts? and I
do not think that there is any evidence that man ever existed as a
non-social animal. I must add that I have been very glad to read your
remarks on the supposed case of the hive-bee: it affords an amusing
contrast with what Miss Cobbe has written in the "Theological Review."
(242/3. Mr. Darwin says ("Descent of Man" Edition I., Volume I., page
73; Edition II., page 99), "that if men lived like bees our unmarried
females would think it a sacred duty to kill their brothers." Miss Cobbe
remarks on this "that the principles of social duty would be reversed"
("Theological Review," April 1872). Mr. Morley, on the other hand, says
of Darwin's assertion, that it is "as reassuring as the most absolute
of moralists could desire. For it is tantamount to saying that the
foundations of morality, the distinctions of right and wrong, are deeply
laid in the very conditions of social existence; that there is in face
of these conditions a positive and definite difference between the moral
and the immoral, the virtuous and the vicious, the right and the wrong,
in the actions of individuals partaking of that social existence.")
Undoubtedly the great principle of acting for the good of all the
members of the same community, and therefore the good of the species,
would still have held sovereign sway.

LETTER 243. TO J.D. HOOKER.

(243/1. Sir Joseph Hooker wrote (August 5th, 1871) to Darwin about Lord
Kelvin's Presidential Address at the Edinburgh meeting of the British
Association: "It seems to me to be very able indeed; and what a good
notion it gives of the gigantic achievement of mathematicians and
physicists!--it really made one giddy to read of them. I do not think
Huxley will thank him for his reference to him as a positive unbeliever
in spontaneous generation--these mathematicians do not seem to me to
distinguish between un-belief and a-belief. I know no other name for the
state of mind that is produced under the term scepticism. I had no idea
before that pure Mathematics had achieved such wonders in practical
science. The total absence of any allusion to Tyndall's labours, even
when comets are his theme, seems strange to me.")

Haredene, Albury, Guildford, August 6th [1871].

I have read with greatest interest Thomson's address; but you say so
EXACTLY AND FULLY all that I think, that you have taken all the words
from my mout