352 THE LIMITS OF NATURAL SELECTION 



were all or any of these faculties first developed, when 

 they could have been of no possible use to man in 

 his early stages of barbarism ? How could " natural 

 selection," or survival of the fittest in the struggle 

 for existence, at all favour the development of mental 

 powers so entirely removed from the material neces- 

 sities of savage men, and which even now, with our 

 comparatively high civilization, are, in their farthest 

 developments, in advance of the age, and appear to 

 have relation rather to the future of the race than 

 to its actual status? 



Difficulty as to the Origin of the Moral Sense. 



Exactly the same difficulty arises, when we endeavour 

 to account for the development of the moral sense or 

 conscience in savage man ; for although the practice of 

 benevolence, honesty, or truth, may have been useful 

 to the tribe possessing these virtues, that does not at 

 all account for the peculiar sanctity, attached to actions 

 which each tribe considers right and moral, as con- 

 trasted with the very different feelings with which 

 they regard what is merely useful. The utilitarian 

 hypothesis (which is the theory of natural selection 

 applied to the mind) seems inadequate to account for 

 the development of the moral sense. This subject has 

 been recently much discussed, and I will here only 

 give one example to illustrate my argument. The 

 utilitarian sanction for truthfulness is by no means 

 very powerful or universal. Few laws enforce it. ISTo 

 very severe reprobation follows untruthfulness. In all 



