268 Darwin, and after Darwin. 



the same community ; and thus we can understand 

 the extraordinary degree in which not only co- 

 operative instincts, but also largely intelligent social 

 habits, have here been developed \ Similarly, in the 

 case of mankind, we can understand the still more ex- 

 traordinary development of these things culminating 

 in the moral sense. I have heard a sermon, preached 

 at one of the meetings of the British Association, 

 entirely devoted to arguing that the moral sense could 

 not have been evolved by natural selection, seeing 

 that the altruism which this sense involves is the 

 very opposite of selfishness, which alone ought to have 

 been the product of survival of the fittest in a struggle 

 for life. And, of course, this argument would have 

 been perfectly sound had Darwin limited the struggle 

 for existence to individuals, without extending it to 

 communities. But if the preacher had ever read 

 Darwin's works he would have found that, when thus 

 extended, the principle of natural selection is bound 

 to work in favour of the co-operative instincts in the 

 case of so highly social an animal as man ; and that 

 of these instincts conscience is the highest imaginable 

 exhibition. 



What I have called tribal fitness in contra- 

 distinction to individual fitness begins with the 

 family, developes in the community (herd, hive, clan, 

 &c.), and usually ends with the limits of the species. 

 On the one hand, however, it is but seldom that it 

 extends so far as to embrace the entire species ; while, 

 on the other hand, it may in some cases, and as it were 



1 For cases, see Animal Intelligence, in the chapters on Ants and 

 Bees; and, for discussion of principles, Mental Evolution in Animals, 

 in the chapters on Instinct. 



