No Society Without Moral Law 287 



According to the distorted social Darwinism, , 

 force is the basis of society, but in the true Dar- 

 winian theory the foundation of society is the 

 moral law, derived from the social instincts. The 

 purpose of the moral sense is to secure the welfare ^ 

 of the tribe: 



We have now seen that actions are regarded by 

 savages, and were probably so regarded by primeval 

 man, as good or bad, solely as they obviously affect 

 the welfare of the tribe — not that of the species, 

 nor that of an individual member of the tribe. This 

 conclusion agrees well with the belief that the so-called 

 moral sense is aboriginally derived from the social 

 instincts, for both relate at first exclusively to the 

 community.* 



And he points out that society, even on the limited 

 scale of the tribes, could not exist without such a 

 moral sense. 



No tribe could hold together if murder, robbery, 

 treachery, etc., were common; consequently such 

 crimes within the limits of the same tribe "are branded 

 with everlasting infamy. "* 



The contrast could scarcely be made more clear 

 between Darwin's theory of society, held together 

 from within by the cementing power of the moral 

 sense and social instincts, and the theories of the 

 philosophy of force, as represented in the sociology 

 of Spencer, Ward, and Ratzenhofer, in which 



' The Descent oj Man, p. 134. » Idem, p. 132. 



