96 NATURAL SELECTION AND 



% 2. THE EVOLUTION OF MORALITY. 



The question, of the origin of the moral sense 

 is put aside in Darwinism)- as " far too vast and 

 complex to be discussed " there ; but some dis- 

 cussion of it cannot well be avoided, because it 

 forms the best initial test of the adequacy or 

 inadequacy of the theory of natural selection 

 outside the merely biological domain. The 

 late Professor Clifford's brilliant, but too brief, 

 contribution to ethics contains a more thorough- 

 going application of the theory of natural 

 selection to moral ideas than is to be found 

 even in Darwin's Descent of Man ; for Darwin, 

 in rather hesitating fashion, was still inclined 

 to admit the transmission of acquired habits. 3 

 Natural selection is also the principle of ex- 

 planation adopted in Mr. Leslie Stephen's 

 Science of Ethics, and, more explicitly still, in 

 Mr. S. Alexander's Moral Order and Progress. 



To put the matter very briefly : Man starts 

 with social instincts of the same kind as are to 

 be found developed in different degrees among 



1 p. 462. 



2 E.g., p. 125 (edit. 2). "We may expect that virtuous 

 habits will grow stronger, becoming perhaps fixed by in- 

 heritance." 



