The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, Vol. IDarwin, Charles
Science
The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, Vol. I
Darwin, Charles
Evolution (Biology); Human beings -- Origin; Sex differences; Sexual dimorphism (Animals); Sexual selection in animals
It may be well first to premise that I do not wish to maintain that any
strictly social animal, if its intellectual 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
different lines of conduct. 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. Nevertheless the bee, or any other social animal, would in
our supposed case gain, as it appears to me, some feeling of right and
wrong, or a conscience. For each individual would 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 satisfaction or dissatisfaction 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: the one
would have been right and the other wrong; but to these terms I shall
have to recur.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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