The Origins of Society and of Morality.
One further point must be considered before this outline sketch of the
manner of man's origin can be called complete. The psychical development
of Humanity, since its earlier stages, has been largely clue to the
reaction of individuals upon one another in those various relations
which we characterize as social.[10] In considering the origin of Man,
the origin of human society cannot be passed over. Foreshadowings of
social relations occur in the animal world, not only in the line of our
own vertebrate ancestry, but in certain orders of insects which stand
quite remote from that line. Many of the higher mammals are gregarious,
and this is especially true of that whole order of primates to which we
belong. Rudimentary moral sentiments are also clearly discernible in the
highest members of various mammalian orders, and in all but the lowest
members of our own order. But in respect of definiteness and permanence
the relations between individuals in a state of gregariousness fall far
short of the relations between individuals in the rudest human society.
The primordial unit of human society is the family, and it was by the
establishment of definite and permanent family relationships that the
step was taken which raised Man socially above the level of gregarious
apehood. This great point was attained through that lengthening of the
period of helpless childhood which accompanied the gradually increasing
intelligence of our half-human ancestors. When childhood had come to
extend over a period of ten or a dozen years--a period which would be
doubled, or more than doubled, where several children were born in
succession to the same parents--the relationships between father and
mother, brethren and sisters, must have become firmly knit; and thus the
family, the unit of human society, gradually came into existence.[11]
The rudimentary growth of moral sentiment must now have received a
definite direction. As already observed, with the beginnings of infancy
in the animal world there came the genesis in the parents of feelings
and actions not purely self-regarding. Rudimentary sympathies, with
rudimentary capacity for self-devotion, are witnessed now and then among
higher mammals, such as the dog, and not uncommonly among apes. But as
the human family, with its definite relationships, came into being,
there must necessarily have grown up between its various members
reciprocal necessities of behaviour. The conduct of the individual could
no longer be shaped with sole reference to his own selfish desires, but
must be to a great extent subordinated to the general welfare of the
family. And in judging of the character of his own conduct, the
individual must now begin to refer it to some law of things outside of
himself; and hence the germs of conscience and of the idea of duty. Such
were no doubt the crude beginnings of human morality.
With this genesis of the family, the Creation of Man may be said, in a
certain sense, to have been completed. The great extent of cerebral
surface, the lengthened period of infancy, the consequent capacity for
progress, the definite constitution of the family, and the judgment of
actions as good or bad according to some other standard than that of
selfish desire,--these are the attributes which essentially distinguish
Man from other creatures. All these, we see, are direct or indirect
results of the revolution which began when natural selection came to
confine itself to psychical variations, to the neglect of physical
variations. The immediate result was the increase of cerebrum. This
prolonged the infancy, thus giving rise to the capacity for progress;
and infancy, in turn, originated the family and thus opened the way for
the growth of sympathies and of ethical feelings. All these results have
perpetually reacted upon one another until a creature different in kind
from all other creatures has been evolved. The creature thus evolved
long since became dominant over the earth in a sense in which none of
his predecessors ever became dominant; and henceforth the work of
evolution, so far as our planet is concerned, is chiefly devoted to the
perfecting of this last and most wonderful product of creative energy.