THE DESCENT OR ORIGIN OF MAN 187 



maintain tbat any strictly social animal, if its intellectual 

 laoalties 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 ob- 

 jects, so they might have a sense of right and wrong, 

 though, led by it to follow widely different lines of con- 

 duct. 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." Never- 

 theless, the bee, or any other social animal, would gain in 

 our supposed case, as it appears to me, some feeling of right 

 or wrong, or a conscience. For each individual would have 

 an inward sense of possessing certain stronger or more en- 

 during instincts, and others less strong or enduring; so that 

 there would often be a struggle as to which impulse should 

 be followed; and satisfaction, dissatisfaction, or even misery 

 would be felt, as past impressions 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 followed the one impulse rather than 

 the other. The one course ought to have been followed, 



• Mr. H. Sidgwlck remarks, in an able discussion on this subject (tha 

 "Academy," June 15, 1872, p. 231), "a superior bee, we may feel sure, would 

 aspire to a milder solution of the population question." Judging, however, 

 from the habits of many or most savages, man solves the problem by female 

 infanticide, polyandry, and promiscuous intercourse; therefore it may well be 

 doubted whether it would be by a milder method. Miss Cobbe, in commenting 

 ("Darwinism in Morals," "Theological Review," April, 1872, pp. 188-191) on 

 the same illustration, says, the principles of social duty would be thus reversed; 

 and by this, I presume, she means that the fulfilment of a social duty would tend 

 to the injury of individuals; but she overlooks the fact, which she would doubt- 

 less admit, that the instincts of the bee have been acquired for the good of the 

 community. She goes so far as to say that if the theory of_ ethics advocated in 

 this chapter were ever generally accepted, "I cannot but believe that in the hour 

 of their triumph would be sounded the knell of the virtue of mankind!" It is 

 to be hoped that the behef in the permanence of -virtue on this earth is not held 

 by many persons on so weak a tenure. 



