278 THE PRINCIPLES OF HEREDITY 



as strong or stronger than any instinct. Formerly it was 

 carried to such extremes that monks and nuns refused to 

 view their own bodies, and so to wash. The Turkish woman 

 is modest about her face : the English woman delights in 

 displaying it. The women of our lower orders conceal their 

 shoulders, as do the women of the upper classes in the 

 morning. In the evening the latter would consider covered 

 shoulders unseemly. The children of savages removed from 

 the ancestral environment have been taught extreme modesty 

 by missionaries. We have no reason to suppose that the 

 child of Quakers reared by savages would instinctively desire 

 the concealment of even a fig-leaf. 



445. Morality is said to be an instinct. But there is no 

 evidence that any human individual or race ever possessed 

 any morality except such as was acquired through the 

 imitative faculty, or, in rarer cases, through reasoned thought. 

 The extraordinary diversity of moral systems in time and 

 space, the sharp contrasts that exist between race and race, 

 the swift transitions which have occurred during history, is 

 conclusive evidence that morality is no other than an acquire- 

 ment. Moreover, if morality (as also modesty) be an inborn 

 character, an instinct, it must have arisen through a direct 

 process of Natural Selection. A process of Natural Selection, 

 by which in the remote past immodest and immoral savages 

 were eliminated, is hardly conceivable. It is sometimes 

 maintained that modesty and morality were evolved by the 

 elimination, not of immodest and immoral individuals, but of 

 communities. This contention, however, is founded on a 

 confusion of thought. No evolution can result from the 

 elimination of communities unless all the members of each 

 community are the offspring of a single individual (e. g. 

 queen-bee), in which case it is the parent, the individual, 

 that is really selected. Otherwise any evolution that occurs 

 must result from selective elimination within the community. 

 A community which merely displaced another would spread, 

 but undergo no racial change. Thus Irish sexual morality 

 is said to be greater than the sexual morality of the English. 

 If the English perished the Irish might swarm across the 

 Channel, but it is difficult to perceive how their alleged 

 moral instinct would be increased thereby. 



446. Fear and hate are said to be instincts. As a fact, in 

 man they are acquired emotions. The adult fears or hates 

 nothing except that which he has learned to fear or hate. 

 Unlike the frog in his fear of the snake, or the stag in his 

 hate of a rival, he gains these impulses to action through 



