I will take another test of Benthamism by Darwinism, which will more exactly bring out the argument for which I contend. We have a traditional horror of infanticide which revolts all our best feelings and shocks our principles. But if Mr Darwin has demonstrated this struggle for existence existing from all time; if also we are disembarrassed from all advertence to another world; if, further, Mr Malthus, before Mr Darwin, has shown reason to believe that over-population is the cause of half the evils of this life, what is there in Benthamite principles which should prevent our sacrificing these unconscious innocents to the greatest happiness of the greatest number? Nothing, except the horror we should excite among mankind still imbued with the old superstitions! A person who did not hold to Mr Malthus’ views might demur; but a Malthusian, who was also a disciple of Mr Bentham, could only hold back because his feelings were better than his principles. A disciple of Mr Darwin’s would probably stand aloof, and would merely see in our notions an artificial interference with the working of his theory, preventing the struggle for existence going on according to natural laws. This seems to me to be almost said in the same article from the Pall Mall Gazette, from which I have quoted. Mr Darwin, in his “Origin of Species” (p. 249), has pointed out that “we ought to admire the savage instinct which leads the queen-bee to destroy her young daughters as soon as born, because this is for the good of the community.” And in his new book he says, firmly and unmistakably (i. 73), that “if men were reared under precisely the same conditions as hive-bees, there can hardly be a doubt that our unmarried females would, like the worker-bees, think it a sacred duty to kill their brothers, and mothers would strive to kill their fertile daughters, and no one would think of interfering.” The Pall Mall continues—
“If, from one point of view, this is apt to shock a timorous and unreflecting mind, by asserting that the most cherished of our affections might have been, under certain circumstances, a vicious piece of self-indulgence, and its place in the scale of morality taken by what is now the most atrocious kind of crime; nevertheless, from another point of view, such an assertion 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 the 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.”
This is very well. It is so now, because of the traditional sentiments and principles which still retain their force—but how long will it continue?
I invite attention to the following passage from Mr Hepworth Dixon’s “New America” (vol. i. p. 312, 6th edition), which I must say struck me very forcibly when I read it. He narrates a conversation which he had with Brigham Young on the subject of incest:—“Speaking for himself, not for the church, he (Brigham Young) said he saw none at all (i.e. no objection at all). He added, however, that he would not do it himself,—‘my prejudices prevent me.’” Upon which Mr Hepworth Dixon observes—
“This remnant of an old feeling brought from the Gentile world, and this alone, would seem to prevent the saints (Mormons) from rushing into the higher forms of incest. How long will these Gentile sentiments remain in force? ‘You will find here,’ said elder Stenhouse to me, talking on another subject, ‘polygamists of the third generation. When these boys and girls grow up and marry, you will have in these valleys the true feeling of patriarchal life. The old world is about us yet, and we are always thinking of what people may say in the Scottish hills and the Midland shires.’”
Here, and in the previous extract, we seem to catch glimpses of what the morality of the future is likely to be, at any rate in such matters as infanticide and incest, if old notions are to be discarded, and men are left, in each generation, to no higher rule than their own individual calculation as to pleasure and pain, or to the prevailing sense or determination of the community as to what the conditions of utility may permit.
The nineteenth century is now verging on its decline, and of it, too, may we say that it has been better than its principles. Yet, in spite of its philanthropy, and its aspirations for good, the destructive principles which it has nursed are rapidly gaining on its instincts: and if we may not truly at this moment paint its glories, as they have been depicted, I think by Alexandre Dumas, as “the livery of heroism, turned up with assassination and incest,” is the time very remote when the description will apply?
CHAPTER II
THE LAW OF NATURE.
But underlying the question of the law of nations, and determining it, is the question whether or not there is a law of nature—a rule of right and wrong, independent of, and anterior to, positive legislative or international enactment. To prevent misconception, however, as to the scope of the inquiry, it is as well that I should state that I am only regarding the law of nature as the law of conscience (by which the Gentiles “were a law unto themselves,” Rom. ii. 14), in so far as it has manifested itself in laws and maxims; and the question I am here concerned with is, whether in any sense which history can take cognizance of, there was a rule of right and wrong previous to legislative enactment?