But as to the beginning of the social virtues I was puzzled.
In most religions morality is supposed to have been established by divine revelation. Men did not know right from wrong until God gave them codes of laws ready-made; and even after men had the divine laws given to them they were by nature so depraved that they could only obey those laws by the special grace of God.
The idea that morality was slowly built up by evolution was first given to the world by Spencer and Darwin. It has since been elaborated by other writers, notably by Winwood Reade and Prince Kropotkin.
The notions of "the struggle for existence" and "the survival of the fittest" have been too commonly taken to mean that life in the animal world is one tragic series of ruthless single combats; that every man's hand always was and ever must be against the hand of every man, and every beast's tooth and claw against the tooth and claw of every beast.
But if we read Darwin's Descent of Man and Prince Kropotkin's Mutual Aid Among Animals and Winwood Reade's Martyrdom of Man, we shall find that the law of natural selection does not favour any such horrible conclusions.
Self-preservation may be the first law of nature; but it is not the last law of nature. In union is strength. The gregarious animals—those which live in communities of flocks and herds—as the apes, the deer, the rooks, the bees, the bison, the swallows, and the wolves, gain by mutual aid in the struggle for existence, for, by reason of their numbers and their union, they are better able to watch for the approach and to defeat the attacks of their enemies.
From this union and mutual aid of the gregarious animals arose the social instincts.
The sociable animals would doubtless be first drawn together partly for safety and partly for company.
Sheep, deer, buffalo, wild dogs, ants, rooks, and other social animals enjoy the companionship of their own kind. They play together, feed together, sleep together, hunt together, and help each other to evade or resist their common foes. They share in social pleasures, and practise some of the social virtues.
And as the more sociable animals would be safest, and the less sociable animals most exposed to danger, natural selection would tend to raise the level of sociability, because the stock would be bred more from sociable than from unsociable animals.