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Updated: June 17, 2025
Anticipatory character of morals. Sir John Lubbock's explanation. Summary and conclusion. Any inquiry into the origin of the notion of "morality" the conception of "right" may, perhaps, be considered as somewhat remote from the question of the Genesis of Species; the more so, since Mr. Darwin, at one time, disclaimed any pretension to explain the origin of the higher psychical phenomena of man.
My first notice of it will I think appear in Nature next week, but I have been hurried for it, and it is not so well written an article as I could wish. I sincerely hope your health is improving. Believe me yours very faithfully, P.S. I fear Lubbock's motion is being pushed off to the end of the Session, and Hooker's case will not be fairly considered.
Lubbock's recent book on "The Craft of Fiction" has emphasized an art of approach and point of view in the great novelists which was thoroughly conscious, even though they may never have tried to formulate it in words. I mean particularly the defining of their themes, their objectives.
His happiness, like the Scythian philosopher's, lay all in the beauties of his garden; and best-loved and visited most often, was the apiary, composed of twelve domes of straw, some of which he had painted a bright pink, and some a clear yellow, but most of all a tender blue; having noticed, long before Sir John Lubbock's demonstrations, the bees' fondness for this colour.
Anyhow the subject is one concerning which the comparative mythologist has, at different times, drawn opposite theories; but of this there can be no doubt, that plant-worship was a primitive faith of mankind, a fact in connection with which we may quote Sir John Lubbock's words, how, "By man in this stage of progress everything was regarded as having life, and being more or less a deity."
Occasionally, inexperienced ants carry in grass and unsuitable leaves; these are invariably brought out again and thrown away. Nature, 11th June 1874. Naturalist in Nicaragua, 2nd edition, 1888, pp. 71-84. For a brief discussion of the relation of ants to plants generally, see Lubbock's Ants, Bees, and Wasps, 1882, chap. iii. Domestic animals of Ants.
For a discussion of the methods of communication among Ants, tending to the conclusion that these methods "almost amount to language," see Lubbock's Ants, Bees, and Wasps, chap. vi. And for a general discussion of language among animals, see Alix, L'esprit de nos Bêtes, pp. 331-367. The Formica fusca constructs its nest of plastered earth.
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!
Numberless instances are supplied in such works as Tylor's, Lubbock's, and Spencer's Ecclesiastical Institutions, which go to show this primatial or pontifical authority resident in the chief of the State, and the transference of its offices to subordinate people, who gradually and naturally became an official body or caste called priests or elders, as representatives of heads of families, or of the tribe or State.
Most of what he says has been said so much more forcibly by Buckle, whose work I have read for the second time with increased admiration, although with a clear view of some of his errors. Nevertheless, his is I think unapproachably the grandest work of the present century, and the one most likely to liberalise opinion. Lubbock's book is very good, but his concluding chapter very weak.
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