Mr.Lecky never made a greater blunder, and your kindness has made you let me off too easily.
(242/2.

In the first edition of the "Descent of Man," I., page 97, Mr.
Lecky is quoted as one of those who assumed that the "foundation of morality lay in a form of selfishness; but more recently in the 'greatest happiness' principle." Mr.Lecky's name is omitted in this connection in the second edition, page 120.

In this edition Mr.Darwin makes it clearer that he attaches most importance to the social instinct as the "primary impulse and guide.") With respect to Mr.Mill, nothing would have pleased me more than to have relied on his great authority with respect to the social instincts, but the sentence which I quote at [Volume I.] page 71 ("if, as is my own belief, the moral feelings are not innate, but acquired, they are not for that reason less natural") seems to me somewhat contradictory with the other words which I quote, so that I did not know what to think; more especially as he says so very little about the social instincts.

When I speak of intellectual activity as the secondary basis of conscience, I meant in my own mind secondary in period of development; but no one could be expected to understand so great an ellipse.

With reference to your last sentence, do you not think that man might have retrograded in his parental, marriage, and other instincts without having retrograded in his social instincts?
and I do not think that there is any evidence that man ever existed as a non-social animal.