d form. As will shortly be seen, I take a
different view of its origin.]

[Footnote 31: _Proceedings of the Royal Society of Tasmania_, iii., p.
280-81.]

[Footnote 32: I have since found, however, that the name Dawn, which
occurs in various places, seems more frequently a birth-name, given
because the birth took place at dawn.]

MORALS AND MORAL SENTIMENTS.

[_First published in_ The Fortnightly Review _for April,_ 1871.]

If a writer who discusses unsettled questions takes up every gauntlet
thrown down to him, polemical writing will absorb much of his energy.
Having a power of work which unfortunately does not suffice for
executing with anything like due rapidity the task I have undertaken, I
have made it a policy to avoid controversy as much as possible, even at
the cost of being seriously misunderstood. Hence it resulted that when
in _Macmillan's Magazine_, for July, 1869, Mr. Richard Hutton published,
under the title "A Questionable Parentage for Morals," a criticism on a
doctrine of mine, I decided to let his misrepresentations pass unnoticed
until, in the course of my work, I arrived at the stage where, by a full
exposition of this doctrine, they would be set aside. It did not occur
to me that, in the meantime, these erroneous statements, accepted as
true statements, would be repeated by other writers, and my views
commented upon as untenable. This, however, has happened. In more
periodicals than one, I have seen it asserted that Mr. Hutton has
effectually disposed of my hypothesis. Supposing that this hypothesis
has been rightly expressed by Mr. Hutton, Sir John Lubbock, in his
_Origin of Civilisation_, &c., has been led to express a partial
dissent; which I think he would not have expressed had my own
exposition been before him. Mr. Mivart, too, in his recent _Genesis of
Species_, has been similarly betrayed into misapprehensions. And now Sir
Alexander Grant, following the same lead, has conveyed to the readers of
the _Fortnightly Review_ another of these conceptions, which is but very
partially true. Thus I find myself compelled to say as much as will
serve to prevent further spread of the mischief.

* * * * *

If a general doctrine concerning a highly-involved class of phenomena
could be adequately presented in a single paragraph of a letter, the
writing of books would be superfluous. In the brief exposition of
certain ethical doctrines held by me, which is g