Contributions to the theory of natural selection. A series of essays ... By Alfred Russel Wallace ...

352 TIHE LIMITS OF NATURAL SELECTION
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 lnen, and which even now, with our
comparatively high civilization, 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?
)iftculty as to the Origin of the loral Sense.
Exactly the same difficulty arises, when we endcleavour
to account for the development of the moral sense or
conscience in savage manll; for although the practice of
benevolence, honesty, or truth, may have been useful
to the tribe possessing 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
hypothesis (which is the theory of natural selection
applied to the mind) seems inadequate to account for
the development of the moral sense. This subject has
been recently much discussed, and I will here only
give one example to illustrate my argument. The
utilitarian sanction for truthfulness is by no means
very powerful or universal. Few laws enforce it. No
very severe reprobation follows untruthfulness. In all