Chap. III. MORAL SENSE. 73 



important part in guiding the conduct of each member ; 

 for the social instincts and impulses, like all other in- 

 stincts, would be greatly strengthened by habit, as 

 would obedience to the wishes and judgment of the com- 

 munity. These several subordinate propositions must 

 now be discussed ; and some of them at considerable 

 length. 



It may be well first to premise that 1 do not wish to 

 maintain that any strictly social animal, if its intellec- 

 tual faculties were to become as active and as highly 

 developed as in man, would acquire exactly the same 

 moral sense as ours. In the same manner as various 

 animals have some sense of beauty, though they admire 

 widely different objects, so they might have a sense of 

 right and wrong, though led by it to follow widely dif- 

 ferent lines of conduct. If, for instance, to take an ex- 

 treme case, men were reared under precisely the same 

 conditions as hive-bees, there can hardly be a doubt 

 that oar unmarried females would, like the worker- 

 bees, think it a sacred duty to kill their brothers, and 

 mothers would strive to kill their fertile daughters ; 

 and no one would think of interfering. Nevertheless 

 the bee, or any other social animal, would in our sup- 

 posed case gain, as it appears to me, some feeling of 

 right and wrong, or a conscience. For each individual 

 would have an inward sense of possessing certain 

 stronger or more enduring instincts, and others less 

 strong or enduring ; so that there would often be a 

 struggle which impulse should be followed; and satis- 

 faction or dissatisfaction would be felt, as past impres- 

 sions were compared during their incessant passage 

 through the mind. In this case an inward monitor 

 would tell the animal that it would have been better to 

 have followed the one impulse rather than the other. 

 The one course ought to have been followed : the one 



