46 The Descent of Man 



action, abstractedly considered, are intrinsically wrong ; and 

 this we believe to be indisputable. 



It is equally beside the question to show that the ex- 

 istence of mutually beneficial acts and of altruistic habits 

 can be explained by ' natural selection.' No amount of 

 benevolent habits tend even in the remotest degree to 

 account for the intellectual perception of ' right ' and ' duty.' 

 Such habits may make the doing of beneficial acts pleasant, 

 and their omission painful ; but such feelings have essentially 

 nothing whatever to do with the perception of ' right ' and 

 ' wrong,' nor will the faintest incipient stage of the perception 

 be accounted for by the strongest development of such sym- 

 pathetic feelings. Liking to do acts which happen to be 

 good is one thing ; seeing that actions are good, whether we 

 or others like them or not, is quite another. 



Mr. Darwin's account of the moral sense is very different 

 from the above. It may be expressed most briefly by saying 

 that it is the prevalence of more enduring instincts over less 

 persistent ones — the former being social instincts, the latter 

 personal ones. He tells us : — 



*As man cannot prevent old impressions continually re-passing 

 through his mind, he will be compelled to compare the weaker im- 

 pressions of, for instance, past hunger, or of vengeance satisfied, or 

 danger avoided at the cost of other men, with the instinct of sympathy 

 and goodwill to his fellows, which is still present and ever in some 

 degree active in his mind. He will then feel in his imagination that 

 a stronger instinct has yielded to one which now seems comparatively 

 weak ; and then that sense of dissatisfaction will inevitably be felt 

 with which man is endowed, like every other animal, in order that his 

 instincts may be obeyed.' — Vol. i. p. 90. 



Mr. Darwin means by ' the moral sense ' an instinct, and 

 adds, truly enough, that ' the very essence of an instinct is, 

 that it is followed independently of reason ' (vol. i. p. 100). 

 But the very essence of moral action is that it is not followed 

 independently of reason. 



