100 THE CREED OF SCIENCE, RELIGIOUS AND MORAL. 



According to Darwin, the social instincts in animals 

 generally are the result mainly of natural selection. 

 Thus he says, " the feeling of pleasure from society is 

 probably an extension of the parental or filial affections ; 

 and this extension may be in chief part attributed to 

 natural selection, but perhaps in part to mere habit. For 

 with those animals which were benefited by living in 

 close association, the individuals which took the greatest 

 pleasure in society would best escape various dangers ; 

 whilst those that cared least for their comrades, and 

 lived solitary, would perish in greater numbers." And 

 not only the social feelings, but parental and filial affec- 

 tions were thus largely developed. " With respect to the 

 origin of the parental and filial affections, which ap- 

 parently lie at the basis of the social affections, it is 

 hopeless to speculate ; but we may infer that they have 

 been to a large extent gained through natural selection. 

 So it has almost certainly been with the unusual and 

 opposite feeling of hatred between the nearest relations, 

 as with the worker bees, which kill their brother drones, 

 and with the queen bees, which kill their daughter 

 queens; the desire to destroy instead of loving their 

 nearest relations having been here of service to the 

 community." * Natural selection doubtless tended to 

 improve the social affections by preserving those societies 

 which had them most developed ; but, as in all other 

 cases, natural selection does not account for the first ap- 

 pearance of the inward conscious feeling of satisfaction 

 or pleasure in the presence of another being of the 

 species, in which the feeling of sociability consists, still 

 less does natural selection account for the origin of the 

 feeling of love of its young by the parent animal, or 

 of the latter reciprocally by them. It is a more natural 



* Darwin's Descent of Man, vol. i. pp. 80, 81. 



