To F. E. Abbot   30 March 1874

Summary

FEA has expressed CD’s views on the moral sense with remarkable clearness and correctness; his eulogy is magnificent ["Darwin’s theory of conscience and its relation to scientific ethics", Index 12 Mar 1874]. Cannot give a judgment on the essay because he has had "no practice in following abstract and abstruse reasoning".

CD does not see how morality can be "objective and universal". No one would call the maternal bond in lower animals a "moral obligation". When a social animal "becomes in some slight incipient degree" a moral creature "capable of approving or disapproving of its own conduct" do not such obligations remain of a so-called instinctive nature rather than becoming at once moral obligations?

Letter details

Record number

DCP-LETT-9377

From

Charles Robert Darwin

To

Francis Ellingwood Abbot

Date

30 Mar 1874

Sent from

Down

Source of text

Harvard University Archives (Papers of F. E. Abbot, 1841–1904. Named Correspondence, 1857–1903. Folder: Darwin, Charles and W. E. Darwin (son), 1871–1883, box 44. HUG 1101)

Physical description

4pp and ADraftS 4pp

Contributor

Darwin Correspondence Project[View Ɛpsilon collection]

Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 22.

• Abbot, F. E.
• Darwin, C. R.