•V 



196 DARWINISM STATED BY DARWIN HIMSELF. 



naturally become in a paramount degree the guide to 

 action. But it should be borne in mind that, however 

 great weight we may attribute to public opinion, our re- 

 gard for the approbation and disapprobation of our fellows 

 depends on sympathy, which, as we shall see, forms an 

 essential part of the social instinct, and is, indeed, its 

 foundation-stone. Lastly, habit in the individual would 

 ultimately play a very important part in guiding the con- 

 duct of each member ; for the social instinct, together 

 with sympathy, is, like any other instinct, greatly strength- 

 ened by habit, and so consequently would be obedience to 

 the wishes and judgment of the community. These sev- 

 eral subordinate propositions must now be discussed, and 

 some of them at considerable length. 



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

 maintain that any strictly social animal, if its intellectual 

 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 ob- 

 jects, so they might have a sense of right and wrong, 

 though led by it to follow widely different lines of con- 

 duct. If, for instance, to take an extreme case, men were 

 reared under precisely the same conditions as hive-bees, 

 there can hardly be a doubt that our unmarried females 

 would, like the worker-bees, think it a sacred duty to kill 

 their brothers, and mothers would strive to kill their fer- 

 tile daughters ; and no one would think of interfering. 

 Nevertheless, the bee, or any other social animal, would 

 gain in our supposed case, as it appears to me, some feel- 

 ing of right or wrong, or a conscience. For each indi- 

 vidual 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 as 



