It is nothing but utilitarianism, pure and simple, after all.

For it can never be intended that authority is obeyed because of an intuition that it _should be deferred to_, for that would be to admit the very principle of absolute morality which Sir John combats.

It must be meant, then, that authority is obeyed through fear of the consequences of disobedience, or through pleasure felt in obeying the authority which commands.

In the latter case we have "pleasure" as the end and no rudiment of the conception "duty." In the former we have fear of punishment, which appeals directly to the sense of "utility to the individual," and no amount of such a sense will produce the least germ of "ought" which is a conception different _in kind_, and in which the notion of "punishment" has no place.

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! Were it really the case that virtue was a _mere kind of "retrieving,"_ then certainly we should {205} have to view with apprehension the spread of intellectual cultivation, which would lead the human "retrievers" to regard from a new point of view their fetching and carrying.