ON HUMAN NATURE AND ITS CAPACITIES FOR VIRTUE. 99 



all but certain that our repulsive but most pitiable and 

 forlorn progenitors possessed one redeeming quality, that 

 of sociability, from which everything might be hoped in 

 the future, and from which, in -fact, all moral improve- 

 ment did actually afterwards come. 



Aboriginal man was a social animal ; he had in him 

 the germs of the quality of sociability, which attracted 

 him to his fellows, and made him dissatisfied and uncom- 

 fortable when long alone. Man inherited this quality 

 probably from the man-like apes, his immediate an- 

 cestor,* since we find some of the existing species of 

 apes are social, if not sociable; at all events, , however 

 acquired, our Caliban ancestors early possessed socia- 

 bility, and by degrees they developed it more and more. 

 The rude primitive man, moreover, became in time at- 

 tracted to some rather than others of his half-human 

 brothers, within his own horde or tribe ; a conscious, and 

 in itself an agreeable, feeling of liking for some rather 

 than others of his forlorn fellows, was born in his rugged 

 breast perhaps for one only who had been more useful 

 to him, or particularly pleasant, or even likeable without 

 known reason. From this rude beginning was born 

 friendship ; the feeling of affection and love for others, 

 though in faint and elementary degree. But where 

 there is love for one, love for several is always pos- 

 sible ; and from sociability and a feeling of common 

 interest and common danger, a general and diffused 

 feeling of good-will to all the members would result. It 

 is probable also that, together with sociability, the faint 

 germs of sympathy existed in aboriginal man, which 

 would make easier the evolution of all the subsequent 

 virtues, including love and pity and justice.f 



* Darwin's Descent of Man, vol. i. pp. 74, 85. f Ibid., p. 78. 



