2^2 Darwin's Theory of Social Progress 



Darwin rejects, as entirely lacking any founda- 

 tion in scientific evidence, the anthropological 

 romance of the pre-social "natural" man, living 

 in a state of continual warfare of each against all, 

 which was created by Hobbes and seems to have 

 been adopted without modification by Huxley. 

 In a letter to John Morley written by Darwin in 

 1871, he says: 



I do not think there is any evidence that man ever 

 existed as a non-social animal.^ 



On the contrary, all the scientific evidence which 

 we possess goes to show that not only primitive 

 man but even the members of the animal kingdom 

 who constituted the immediate ancestors of man 

 were social beings. Darwin sums up the evidence 

 thus: 



Judging from the habits of savages and of the greater 

 number of the Quadrumana, primeval men, and even 

 their ape-like progenitors, probably lived in society.* 



Darwin even goes so far as to suggest that man 

 has probably sprung from some comparatively 

 small and weak species like the chimpanzee instead 

 of from one as powerful as the gorilla. He points 

 out what an immense advantage it must have 

 been to man to have descended from such a 

 comparatively weak creature, since it would have 



' More Letters of Charles Darwin, vol. i,, p. 327. 

 ' The Descent of Man, p. 78. 



