ABSTRACT
The challenge which made me re-order my thoughts on the present subject was an unusually explicit statement of what I now recognize as a widespread error implicit in much current discussion. I met it in an interesting new work of what is regarded as the new American science of social biology, Dr. G. E. Pugh's The Biological Origin of Human Valuesa book which has received great praise from the recognized head of this school, Professor Edward O. Wilson of Harvard University.2 The startling point about it is that its whole argument is based on the express assumption that there are only two kinds of human values which Dr Pugh designates as 'primary' and 'secondary', meaning by the first term those which are genetically determined and therefore innate, while he defines the secondary ones as 'products of rational thought'.3
