Darwinism stated by Darwin himself: Characteristic passages from the writings of Charles DarwinDarwin, Charles
Science
Darwinism stated by Darwin himself: Characteristic passages from the writings of Charles Darwin
Darwin, Charles
Evolution (Biology)
Several years ago a keeper at the Zoölogical Gardens showed me some
deep and scarcely healed wounds on the nape of his own neck, inflicted
on him, while kneeling on the floor, by a fierce baboon. The little
American monkey, who was a warm friend of this keeper, lived in the
same large compartment, and was dreadfully afraid of the great baboon.
Nevertheless, as soon as he saw his friend in peril, he rushed to the
rescue, and by screams and bites so distracted the baboon that the man
was able to escape, after, as the surgeon thought, running great risk
of his life.
Besides love and sympathy, animals exhibit other qualities connected
with the social instincts, which in us would be called moral; and I
agree with Agassiz that dogs possess something very like a conscience.
* * * * *
[Page 107.]
With mankind, selfishness, experience, and imitation, probably add,
as Mr. Bain has shown, to the power of sympathy; for we are led by
the hope of receiving good in return to perform acts of sympathetic
kindness to others; and sympathy is much strengthened by habit. In
however complex a manner this feeling may have originated, as it is
one of high importance to all those animals which aid and defend one
another, it will have been increased through natural selection; for
those communities which included the greatest number of the most
sympathetic members would flourish best and rear the greatest number of
offspring.
It is, however, impossible to decide in many cases whether certain
social instincts have been acquired through natural selection, or are
the indirect result of other instincts and faculties, such as sympathy,
reason, experience, and a tendency to imitation; or, again, whether
they are simply the result of long-continued habit. So remarkable an
instinct as the placing of sentinels to warn the community of danger
can hardly have been the indirect result of any of these faculties; it
must, therefore, have been directly acquired. On the other hand, the
habit followed by the males of some social animals of defending the
community, and of attacking their enemies or their prey in concert, may
perhaps have originated from mutual sympathy; but courage, and in most
cases strength, must have been previously acquired, probably through
natural selection.
THE LOVE OF APPROBATION.
[Page 109.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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