142 THK DESCENT OF MAN. 



or remorse, analogous to the feelings caused by other power- 

 ful instincts or desires, when left nnsatisfied or balked. 

 We compare the weakened imjiression of a past temptation 

 with the ever present social instincts, or with habits, gained 

 in early youth and strengthened during our whole lives 

 until they have become almost as strong as instincts. If 

 with the temptation still before us we do not yield, it is 

 because either the social instinct or some custom is at the 

 moment predominant, or because we have learned that it 

 will appear to us hereafter the stronger, when compared 

 with the weakened impression of the temptation, and we 

 realize that its' violation would cause us suffering. Looking 

 to future generations, there is no cause to fear that the 

 social instincts will grow weaker, and we may expect that! 

 virtuous habits will grow stronger, becoming perhaps fixed 

 by inheritance. In this case the struggle between our| 

 higher and lower impulses will be less severe, and virtue 

 will be triumphant. 



Summary of the Last Tiop Chapters. There can be no 

 doubt that the difference between the mind of the lowest 

 man and that of the highest animal is immense. An 

 anthropomorphous ape, if he could take a dispassionate view 

 of his own case, would admit that though he could form 

 an artful plan to plunder a garden though he could use 

 stones for fighting or for breaking open nuts, yet that the 

 thought of fashioning a stone into a tool was quite beyond 

 his scope. Still less, as he would admit, could he follow 

 out a train of metaphysical reasoning, or solve a mathemat- 

 ical problem, or reflect on God, or admire a grand natural 

 scene. Some apes, however, would probably declare that 

 they could and did admire the beauty of the colored skin 

 and fur of their partners in marriage. They would admit, 

 that though they could make other apes understand by 

 cries some of their perceptions and similar wants, the notion 

 of expressing different ideas by definite sounds had never 

 crossed their minds. They might insist that they were 

 ready to aid their fellow-apes of the same troop in many 

 ways, to risk their lives for them, and to take charge of 

 their orphans; but they would be forced to acknowledge 

 that disinterested love for all living creatures, the most 

 noble attribute of man, was quite beyond their compre- 

 hension. 



