Dear Sir,

I am extremely gratified to find that my effort to present a faithful analysis of your views on the Moral Sense has been satisfactory to you.¹

I don’t think Mr. Mill’s expressions in pp. 45 and 46 point to any fundamental difference between him and yourself. He admits that the moral faculty is capable of springing up “spontaneously” in “a certain small degree” (p. 45 of Utilitarianism), and this is as much as you want, is it not?² Perhaps he w^d. hold that the great force of Association over the principles of human nature came into effective play, at a somewhat earlier stage than you w^d. be inclined to allow.³ But I see nothing in what you have written to make me suppose that you w^d. deny the preponderant power of Association in shaping the social instinct, granting that to be an ultimate and insoluble fact in human nature.

I don’t know whether you are indignant or amused at writers who call you reckless for broaching new doctrines as to the moral sense, at a time when Paris is aflame, and we have republican meetings in the Old Bailey.⁴ Burke was no doubt in the right when he said that the consequences of assumed rights might justly be brought forward in discussing the validity of such rights, but it is a little intolerable that the consequences, or in this case the fantastically imagined consequences, sh^d. be brought forward as tests of the truth of scientific hypotheses.⁵

With many thanks for your courteous note. Believe me, my dear Sir, | Your’s very sincerely, | John Morley.