ix LIMITS OF NATURAL SELECTION IN MAN 199 



seem that such feelings as those of abstract justice and bene- 

 volence could never have been so acquired, because they are 

 incompatible with the law of the strongest, which is the 

 essence of natural selection. But this is, I think, an errone- 

 ous view, because we must look, not to individuals, but to 

 societies ; and justice and benevolence exercised towards mem- 

 bers of the same tribe would certainly tend to strengthen 

 that tribe and give it a superiority over another in which the 

 right of the strongest prevailed, and where, consequently, the 

 weak and the sickly were left to perish, and the few strong 

 ruthlessly destroyed the many who were weaker. 



But there is another class of human faculties that do not 

 regard our fellow-men, and which cannot, therefore, be thus 

 accounted for. Such are the capacity to form ideal concep- 

 tions of space and time, of eternity and infinity the capacity 

 for intense artistic feelings of pleasure, in form, colour, and 

 composition, and for those abstract notions of form and 

 number which render geometry and arithmetic possible. 

 How were all or any of these faculties first developed, when 

 they could have been of no possible use to man in his 

 early stages of barbarism ? How could natural selection, or 

 survival of the fittest in the struggle for existence, at all 

 favour the development of mental powers so entirely removed 

 from the material necessities of savage men, and which even 

 now, with our comparatively high civilisation, are, in their 

 farthest developments, in advance of the age, and appear to 

 have relation rather to the future of the race than to its 

 actual status 1 l 



Difficulty as to the Origin of the Moral Sense 

 Exactly the same difficulty arises when we endeavour to 

 account for the development of the moral sense or conscience 

 in savage man ; for although the practice of benevolence, 

 honesty, or truth may have been useful to the tribe possess- 

 ing these virtues, that does not at all account for the peculiar 

 sanctity attached to actions which each tribe considers right 

 and moral, as contrasted with the very different feelings with 

 which they regard what is merely useful. The utilitarian 



1 This argument is extended and some new illustrations given in Darwin- 

 ism, pp. 461-471. 



