34 



Selection. The 'man' of active and highly developed intel- 

 lectual faculties to whom Darwin refers is not the savage, but 

 the man who is characterized by reason, and whose reason has 

 led him in the past, and is leading him more and more with 

 the passing years, to adopt, in relation to the population 

 question, an attitude of an altogether different character from 

 that of the hive-bees, or even that of the savages whom Darwin 

 quotes. True, the conditions are not the same between bees 

 and man, but evidently there is some similarity, as Darwin 

 has implied in his reference to the practice of savage races. 



Thus, although Darwin frequently includes the ' intellectual 

 faculties' as operative in the rise of the 'moral sense', yet it 

 is apparent that the general effect of his explanation of such 

 origin, is to discount the influence of intellect in favour of that 

 of Natural Selection, from which intellect is excluded 1 

 relegating the former to a very secondary place. 



It would be well, however, to examine precisely what 

 bearing this factor of Natural Selection has in the sphere of 

 morals, since Darwin gave it so dominating a r61e. 



First of all, it should be borne in mind that Natural 

 Selection is a purely biological term with a somewhat definite 

 meaning, the laws governing its operation, according to Darwin, 

 being 'Growth with Reproduction', 'Inheritance', 'Varia- 

 bility', "a Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for 

 Life, and as a consequence to Natural Selection, entailing 

 divergence of character and the extinction of less-improved 

 forms." 2 Further, we have seen what Darwin evidently means 

 by instinct, 3 and we may infer from this that Natural Selection, 

 still operating as a biological factor, is the process by which 

 some instincts are made more enduring and social than others, 

 in somewhat the same manner as that in which some variations 

 of the physical organism survive rather than others. But, 

 that ideas of morality, that is, the "moral sense, or con- 

 science", are the result of such an "unconscious" natural 

 process, and that this process should afford us an explanation 

 of the facts of the moral consciousness, is not only incon- 

 ceivable, but is a length to which Darwin himself will not go. 

 Darwin, we have seen, found it impossible to maintain, in his 

 attempt to explain the moral consciousness, the pure stand- 

 point of natural history with which he set out, for the facts 

 would not bear statement exclusively in biological termin- 



1 See p. 30. 

 'See p. 26. 

 'See p. 30. 



