IX 
LIMITS OF NATURAL SELECTION IN MAN 
199 
seem that such feelings as those of abstract justice and bene- 
volence could never have been so acquired, because they are 
incompatible with the law of the strongest, which is the 
essence of natural selection. But this is, I think, an errone- 
ous view, because we must look, not to individuals, but to 
societies ; and justice and benevolence exercised towards mem- 
bers of the same tribe would certainly tend to strengthen 
that tribe and give it a superiority over another in which the 
right of the strongest prevailed, and where, consequently, the 
weak and the sickly were left to perish, and the few strong 
ruthlessly destroyed the many who were weaker. 
But there is another class of human faculties that do not 
regard our fellow-men, and which cannot, therefore, be thus 
accounted for. Such are the capacity to form ideal concep- 
tions of space and time, of eternity and infinity — the capacity 
for intense artistic feelings of pleasure, in form, colour, and 
composition, and for those abstract notions of form and 
number which render geometry and arithmetic possible. 
How were all or any of these faculties first developed, when 
they could have been of no possible use to man in his 
early stages of barbarism ? How could natural selection, or 
survival of the fittest in the struggle for existence, at all 
favour the development of mental powers so entirely removed 
from the material necessities of savage men, and which even 
now, with our comparatively high civilisation, are, in their 
farthest developments, in advance of the age, and appear to 
have relation rather to the future of the race than to its 
actual status ? 1 
Difficulty as to the Origin of the Moral Sense 
Exactly the same difficulty arises when we endeavour to 
account for the development of the moral sense or conscience 
in savage man ; for although the practice of benevolence, 
honesty, or truth may have been useful to the tribe possess- 
ing these virtues, that does not at all account for the peculiar 
sanctity attached to actions which each tribe considers right 
and moral, as contrasted with the very different feelings with 
which they regard what is merely useful. The utilitarian 
1 This argument is extended and some new illustrations given in Darwin- 
ism , pp. 461-471. 
