Chap. III. 
MORAL SENSE. 
73 > 
important part in guiding the conduct of each member ; 
for the social instincts and impulses, like all other in- 
stincts, would be greatly strengthened by habit, as 
would obedience to the wishes and judgment of the com- 
munity. These several subordinate propositions must 
now be discussed ; and some of them at considerable 
length. 
It may be well first to premise that I do not wish to 
maintain that any strictly social animal, if its intellec- 
tual 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 diffe- 
rent lines of conduct. If, for instance, to take an ex- 
treme 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 sup- 
posed case gain, as it appears to me, some feeling of 
right and wrong, or a conscience. For each individual 
w r ould 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 satis- 
faction or dissatisfaction would be felt, as past impres- 
sions 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 : the one 
