erence to utility or pleasure, has
nevertheless to be constructed and evolved from utility and pleasure, and
ultimately from pleasurable sensations, if we are to accept pure
Darwinianism: if we are to accept, that is, the evolution of man's
psychical nature and highest powers, by the exclusive action of "Natural
Selection," from such faculties as are possessed by brutes; in other words,
if we are to believe that the conceptions of the highest human morality
arose through minute and fortuitous variations of brutal desires and
appetites in all conceivable directions.

It is here contended, on the other hand, that no conservation of any such
variations could ever have given rise to the faintest beginning of any such
moral perceptions; that by "Natural Selection" alone the maxim _fiat
justitia, ruat coelum_ could never have been excogitated, still less have
found a widespread acceptance; that it is impotent to suggest even an
approach towards an explanation of the _first 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 different
senses: (1) _materially_ moral acts, and (2) acts which are _formally_
moral. The first are acts good in themselves, _as acts_, apart from any
intention of the agent which may or may not have been directed towards{196}
"right." The second are acts which are good not only in themselves, as
acts, but also in the deliberate _intention_ of the agent who recognizes
his actions as being "right." Thus acts may be _materially_ moral or
immoral, in a very high degree, without being in the least _formally_ so.
For example, a person may tend and minister to a sick man with scrupulous
care and exactness, having in view all the time nothing but the 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 innocently, because ignorantly, marry a
married man, and so commit 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 relation to the community to which
such animals belong, are absolutely destitute of the most incipient degree
o