6lO The Descent of Mail. Part 111. 



remote period, as enabling him to invent and use language, to 

 make weapons, tools, traps, &c, whereby with the aid of his 

 social habits, he long ago became the most dominant of all living 

 creatures. 



A great stride in the development of the intellect will have 

 followed, as soon as the half-art and half-instinct of language 

 came into use ; for the continued use of language will have 

 reacted on the brain and produced an inherited effect ; and this 

 again will have reacted on the improvement of language. As Mr. 

 Chauncey Wright 1 has well remarked, the largeness of the brain 

 in man relatively to his body, compared with the lower animals, 

 may be attributed in chief part to the early use of some simple 

 form of language, — that wonderful engine which affixes signs to 

 all sorts of objects and qualities, and excites trains of thought 

 which would never arise from the mere impression of the 

 senses, or if they did arise could not be followed out. The 

 higher intellectual powers of man, such as those of ratiocination, 

 abstraction, self-consciousness, &c, probably follow from the con- 

 tinued improvement and exercise of the other mental faculties. 



The development of the moral qualities is a more interesting 

 problem. The foundation lies in the social instincts, including 

 under this term the family ties. These instincts are highly 

 complex, and in the case of the lower animals give special 

 tendencies towards certain definite actions; but the more im- 

 portant elements are love, and the distinct emotion of sympathy. 

 Animals endowed with the social instincts take pleasure in one 

 another's company, warn one another of danger, defend and aid 

 one another in many ways. These instincts do not extend to all 

 the individuals of the species, but only to those of the same 

 community. As they are highly beneficial to the species, they 

 have in all probability been acquired through natural selection. 



A moral being is one who is capable of reflecting on his 

 past actions and their motives — of approving of some and 

 disapproving of others ; and the fact that man is the one being 

 who certainly deserves this designation, is the greatest of all 

 distinctions between him and the lower animals. But in the 

 fourth chapter I have endeavoured to shew that the moral sense 

 follows, firstly, from the enduring and ever-present nature of the 

 social instincts ; secondly, from man's appreciation of the appro- 

 bation and disapprobation of his fellows ; and thirdly, from the 

 high activity of his mental faculties, with past impressions ex- 

 tremely vivid ; and in these latter respects he differs from the 

 lower animals. Owing to this condition of mind, man cannot 



1 'On the Limits of Natural Selection,' in the 'Noith Americas 

 Review,' Oct. 1870, p. 295. 



