the development of feelings

natural

selection.

emerged from impulses, customs, and institutions whose origin can be traced to purely natural or non-moral causes-any more than it is necessary for the biologist to deny the possibility of tracing the first beginnings of life from the inorganic. But the difference of the facts and their different modes of operation have to be recognised. Just as natural selection can have no place in inorganic evolution, because it requires, as a condition of its presence, the competition of living beings for means of nourishment, so, in the same way, its rule is coming to an end wherever conscious beings anticipate its operation by intelligent purposive action.

A further difficulty has to be met by the theory of the development of morality, which is in a sense apart from complementary to the initial difficulty encountered in differentiating the moral from the non-moral. This further difficulty awaits it at a subsequent stage of development when the extension and refinement of moral feeling seem to have gone on in circumstances where there is no room for natural selection to work. Thus it has been admitted that the feeling of sympathy, and the habitual exercise of mutual good offices among members of a community, strengthen that society, and make it fit to prevail in the struggle for existence over other similar societies, the members of which are not so much at one amongst themselves in feeling and in act.

But as benevolence and sympathy widen, and

become less closely connected with a with a definite association of individuals, such as the family or tribe, and there ceases to be a particular body to the welfare of which these social feelings contribute, the operation of the law of natural selection becomes less certain. This law only tends to conserve and perfect the feelings in question, in virtue of the fact that the associations to whose good they lead are successful in the struggle for life over other associations the members of which are not animated by like feelings. The one association lives and expands, while the others are unable to maintain themselves against the encroachments of their neighbours, and thus fall to pieces. The law of natural selection, therefore, comes into play only when there are competing organisms struggling against one another for the means of subsistence and development. Not only is it the case, therefore, that the sympathy which aids the weak who are unable to take care of themselves, does not seem to be of the kind that would contribute to success in the struggle for existence;1 but the more general

Cf. Darwin, Descent of Man, new ed., pp. 205, 206: "With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilised men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination. . . . The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly an incidental result of the instinct of sympathy, which was originally acquired as part of the social instincts, but subsequently rendered, in the manner previously indicated, more tender and more widely diffused. Nor could we

...

and catholic our sympathies are, the less will the law of evolution help to preserve and develop them because the less will they tend to promote the welfare of one rival association rather than that of another. Thus the growth of really unrestricted sympathy with men as men cannot have been promoted in this way. The enthusiasm of humanity' which animated the early Christians, the self-renouncing brotherhood of Buddha, the 'philanthropy' attributed to men like Xenocrates 1 who had freed themselves from the aristocratic prejudices of Athens, the 'caritas generis humani' of the Stoics, such feelings as these could not have been encouraged, any more than they could have been produced, by the operation of natural selection. For, however much they tend to elevate the human character, and to promote human happiness, they do not advance the welfare of one body of men to the exclusion of some other competitor in the struggle for existence.2

But, although the law of natural evolution can

check our sympathy, even at the urging of hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature." This " process of elimination," which we "do our utmost to check," is simply the operation of natural selection; and it is significant that Darwin held that it is only by opposing natural selection that we can save "the noblest part of our nature" from deterioration. 1 Ælian, V. H., xiii. 30.

2 If conscience has no other function than that assigned to it by Clifford, Lectures and Essay, ii. 169, "the preservation of society in the struggle for existence," then it can never reach universal benevolence or prescribe "duties towards all mankind."

not account, by survival of the fittest, for any progress made by universal benevolence, yet it might explain the value ascribed to the feeling of benevolence, when its object is the family or the community. Besides—as has already been pointed out-natural selection always implies an initiative got from elsewhere: it does not itself produce modifications; it only exterminates the unfit, thus allowing favourable variations to flourish and combine. It always implies an independent modification of the organism; its part is to select the modifications best fitted to promote life. Hence the mere fact of benevolence being universalised is not in itself an anomaly on the theory of natural selection, any more than is the fact of its being extended from the family to the tribe. Only, the latter extension is one which it perpetuates, the former is not. No aspect of the theory of evolution seems able to account for an extension of the feeling of universal benevolence among different people or throughout different societies. This feeling has neither tended to promote the welfare of the race animated by it to the exclusion of other competing races-for there are no competing races whom it could affect-nor can it be shown that it makes the individuals possessing it fitter to wage successful war against opposing forces than other individuals.1

1 A difficulty of another kind is suggested by Bain, who holds that the "pleasure of malevolence" is not only a real element in

Its result:

shows the

of the indi

vidual.

Apart from such special difficulties, however, social nature comparative psychology has shed a new light on the mental structure of the individual. The facts it brings forward show that the nature of the individual man cannot be explained without taking into account the relations in which he stands to society by birth, education, and business. He is, from the first, surrounded by, and dependent upon, other individuals, and by a set of established usages and institutions which modify his life; and he is connected with these in such a way that it is impossible to consider him as merely acted upon by them and influencing them in turn. He has been ' produced by, and has become a part of them. His physical and mental structure bears the marks of the same influences as those by which his so-called environment has been formed. He is cell in the 'tissue' of which the body social is composed. This was partly recognised, it is true, before the theory of evolution had been elaborated. But the the human constitution, but greater than would be naturally called forth by the conditions and course of development. "It is remarked by Mr Spencer," he says, "that is was necessary for the progress of the race that destructive activity should not be painful, but on the whole pleasurable. In point of fact, however, the pleasure of destruction has gone much beyond what these words express, and much beyond what is advantageous to the collective interest of animals and of human beings alike. The positive delight in suffering has been at all stages too great."-The Emotions and the Will, p. 66. So far from adopting this argument, however, I must confess myself still amongst the unconvinced regarding the "pleasure of malevolence."