I must add that I have been very glad to read your remarks on the supposed case of the hive-bee: it affords an amusing contrast with what Miss Cobbe has written in the "Theological Review." (242/3.

Mr.Darwin says ("Descent of Man" Edition I., Volume I., page 73; Edition II., page 99), "that if men lived like bees our unmarried females would think it a sacred duty to kill their brothers." Miss Cobbe remarks on this "that the principles of social duty would be reversed" ("Theological Review," April 1872).

Mr.Morley, on the other hand, says of Darwin's assertion, that it is "as reassuring as the most absolute of moralists could desire.

For it is tantamount to saying that the foundations of morality, the distinctions of right and wrong, are deeply laid in the very conditions of social existence; that there is in face of these conditions a positive and definite difference between the moral and the immoral, the virtuous and the vicious, the right and the wrong, in the actions of individuals partaking of that social existence.") Undoubtedly the great principle of acting for the good of all the members of the same community, and therefore the good of the species, would still have held sovereign sway.
LETTER 243.

TO J.D.