112 THE DESCENT OF MAN. 



and readiness, as with most of the higher social animals, to 

 aid their fellows in certain general ways. But these feel- 

 ings and services are by no means extended to all the indi- 

 viduals of the same species, only to those of the same asso- 

 ciation. Secondly, as soon as the mental faculties had 

 become highly developed, images of all past actions and 

 motives would be incessantly passing through the brain of 

 each individual; and that feeling of dissatisfaction, or even 

 misery, which invariably results, as we shall hereafter see, 

 from any unsatisfied instinct, would arise, as often as it 

 was perceived that the enduring and always present social 

 instinct had yielded to some other instinct, at the time 

 stronger, but neither enduring in its nature, nor leaving 

 behind it a very vivid impression. It is clear that many 

 instinctive desires, such as that of hunger, are in their 

 nature of short duration; and after being satisfied, are not 

 readily or vividly recalled. Thirdly, after the power of 

 language had been acquired, and the wishes of the commu- 

 nity could be expressed, the common opinion how each 

 member ought to act for the public good, would 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 regard 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*conduct of each member; for the social 

 instinct, together with sympathy, is, like any other instinct, 

 greatly strengthened by habit, and so consequently would 

 be obedience to the wishes and judgment of the community. 

 These several 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 

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

 though led by it to follow widely different lines of conduct. 

 If, for instance, to take an extreme case, men were reared 

 under precisely the same conditions as hive-bees, there can 



