222 THE GENESIS OF SPECIES. [CHAP. 



besides man, if that " survival " has alone and exclusively 

 produced it in him. 



Abundant examples may indeed be brought forward 

 of useful acts which simulate morality, such as parental 

 care of the young, &c. But did the most undeviating 

 habits guide all brutes in such matters, were even aged 

 and infirm members of a community of insects or birds 

 carefully tended by young which benefited by their expe- 

 rience, such acts would not indicate even the faintest 

 rudiment of real, i. e. formal, morality. " Natural Selection " 

 would, of course, often lead to the prevalence of acts bene- 

 ficial to a community, and to acts materially good; but 

 unless they can be shown to be formally so, they are not 

 in the least to the point, they do not offer any explanation 

 of the origin of an altogether new and fundamentally 

 different motive and conception. 



It is interesting, on the other hand, to note Mr. Darwin's 

 statement as to the existence of a distinct moral feeling 

 even in perhaps the very lowest and most degraded of all 

 the human races known to us. Thus, in the same " Journal 

 of Eesearches " l before quoted, bearing witness to the exist- 

 ence of moral reprobation on the part of the Fuegians, he 

 says : " The nearest approach to religious feeling which I 

 heard of was shown by York Minster (a Fuegian so 

 named), who, when Mr. Bynoe shot some very young 

 ducklings as specimens, declared in the most solemn 

 manner, 'Oh, Mr. Bynoe, much rain, snow, blow much.' 

 This was evidently a retributive punishment for wasting 

 human food." 



Mr. Wallace gives valuable testimony, in his " Malay 

 Archipelago," to the existence of a very distinct, and even 

 1 Vol. i. p. 215. 



