MORAL SENSE. 121 



The mere sight of suffering, independently of love, would 

 suffice to call up in us vivid recollections and associations. 

 The explanation may lie in the fact that, with all animals, 

 sympathy is directed solely toward the members of the same 

 community, and therefore toward known and more or less 

 beloved members, but not to all the individuals of the same 

 species. This fact is not more surprising than that the 

 fears of many animals should be directed against special 

 enemies. Species which are not social, such as lions and 

 tigers, no doubt feel sympathy for the suffering of their own 

 young, but not for that of any other animal. With man- 

 kind selfishness, experience, and imitation, probably add, 

 as Mr. Bain has shown, to the power of sympathy; for we 

 are led by the hope of receiving good in return to perform 

 acts of sympathetic kindness to others; and sympathy is 

 much strengthened by habit. In however complex a 

 manner this feeling may have originated, as it is one of high 

 importance to all those animals which aid and defend one 

 another, it will have been increased through natural selec- 

 tion; for those communities, which included the greatest 

 number of the most sympathetic members, would flourish 

 best and rear the greatest number of offspring. 



It is, however, impossible to decide in many cases whether 

 certain social instincts have been acquired through natural 

 selection, or are the indirect result of other instincts and 

 faculties, such as sympathy, reason, experience, and a ten- 

 dency to imitation; or again, whether they are simply the 

 result of long-continued habit. So remarkable an instinct 

 as the placing sentinels to warn the community of danger 

 can hardly have been the indirect result of any of these 

 faculties; it must, therefore, have been directly acquired. 

 On the other hand, the habit followed by the males of some \ 

 social animals of defending the community, and of attack- 

 ing their enemies or their prey in concert, may perhaps 

 have originated from mutual sympathy; but courage, and 

 in most cases strength, must have been previously acquired, 

 probably through natural selection. 



Of the various instincts and habits, some are much 

 stronger than others; that is, some either give more pleas- 

 ure in their performance, and more distress in their pre- 

 vention, than others; or, which is probably quite as impor- 

 tant, they are, through inheritance, more persistently 

 followed, without exciting any special feeling of pleasure 



