THE UTILITY OF THE AFFECTIONS. 445 



partnership ; and in order that offspring may be reared, 

 this partnership must be continued a considerable 

 time. All living creatures of the higher grade are 

 memorials of conjugal affection and parental care : 

 they are born with a tendency to love, for it is owing 

 to love that they exist. Those animals that are de- 

 ficient in conjugal desire or parental love, produce or 

 bring up no offspring, and are blotted out of the book 

 of Nature. That parents and children should consort 

 together is natural enough ; and the family is multi- 

 plied into the herd. At first the sympathy by which 

 the herd is united is founded only on the pleasures of 

 the breeding season and the duties of the nest. It is 

 based entirely on domestic life. But this sympathy 

 is extended and intensified by the struggle for ex- 

 istence ; herd contends against herd, community 

 against community ; that herd which best combines 

 will undoubtedly survive ; and that herd in which 

 sympathy is most developed will most efficiently com- 

 bine. Here, then, one herd destroys another, not 

 only by means of teeth and claws, but also by means 

 of sympathy and love. The affections, therefore, are 

 weapons, and are developed according to the Dar- 

 winian Law. Love is as cruel as the shark's jaw, 

 as terrible as the serpent's fang. The moral sense is 

 founded on sympathy, and sympathy is founded on 

 self-preservation. With all gregarious animals, in- 

 cluding men, self-preservation is dependent on the 

 preservation of the herd. And so, in order that each 

 may prosper, they must all combine with affection 

 and fidelity, or they will be exterminated by their 

 rivals. 



In the first period of the human herd, co-operation 

 was merely instinctive, as it is in a herd of dog-faced 



