126 HOMO V. DARWIN. 



movement, without any apparent cause, indicated the pre- 

 sence of some strange living agent, who had no right to 

 be on his territory," thus arriving almost at a conception 

 of the supernatural — let Mr. Darwin, I say, try the ex- 

 periment even with this " very sensible animal," and he 

 will find it vain," 



Darwin. "It may be wel first to premise," my Lord, 

 " that I do not wish to maintain that any strictly social 

 animal, if its intellectual faculties were to become as active 

 and as highly developed as in man, would acquire exactly 

 the same moral sense as ours. In the same manner as 

 various animals have some sense of beauty, though they 

 admire widely different objects, so they might have a sense 

 of right and wrong, though led by it to follow widely 

 different lines of conduct. If, for instance, to take an 

 extreme case, men were reared under precisely the same 

 conditions as hive-bees, there can hardly be a doubt that 

 our unmarried females would, like the worker-bees, think 

 it a sacred duty to kill their brothers, and mothers would 

 strive to kill their fertile daughters, and no one would 

 think of interfering. Nevertheless, the bee, or any other 

 social animal, would, in our supposed case, gain, as it 

 appears to me, some feeling of right or wrong, or con- 

 science. For each individual would have an inward sense 

 of possessing certain stronger or more enduring instincts, 

 and others less strong or enduring, so that there would 

 often be a struggle, which impulse should be followed, and 

 satisfaction or dissatisfaction would be felt, as past im- 

 pressions were compared during their incessant passage 

 through the mind. In this case an inward monitor would 

 tell the animal that it would have been better to have fol- 

 lowed the one impulse rather than the other." (Vol. i. p. 73.) 



Lord C. You seem now, Mr. Darwin, to take a different 



