(through the aid of "Natural Selection" alone)
in that "abhorrence" before spoken of, we might expect to be able to detect
unmistakeable evidence of its incipient stages. On the contrary, as regards
the ordinary apes (for with regard to the highest there is no evidence of
the kind) as we see them in confinement, it would be difficult to name any
animals less restricted, by even a generic bar, in the gratification of the
sexual instinct. And although the conditions under which they have been
observed are abnormal, yet these are hardly the animals to present us in a
state of nature, with an extraordinary and exceptional sensitiveness in
such matters. [Page 192]

To take an altogether different case. Care of, and tenderness towards, the
aged and infirm are actions on all hands admitted to be "right;" but it is
difficult to see how such actions could ever have been so useful to a
community as to have been seized on and developed by the exclusive action
of the law of the "survival of the fittest." On the contrary, it seems
probable that on strict utilitarian principles the rigid political economy
of Tierra del Fuego would have been eminently favoured and diffused by the
impartial action of "Natural Selection" alone. By the rigid political
economy referred to, is meant that destruction and utilization of "useless
mouths" which Mr. Darwin himself describes in his highly interesting
"Journal of Researches."[207] He says: "It is certainly true, that when
pressed in winter by hunger, they kill and devour their old women before
they kill their dogs. The boy being asked why they did this, answered,
'Doggies catch otters, old women no.' They often run away into the
mountains, but they are pursued by the men and brought back to the
slaughter-house at their own firesides." Mr. Edward Bartlett, who has
recently returned from the Amazons, reports that at one Indian village
where the cholera made its appearance, the whole population immediately
dispersed into the woods, leaving the sick to perish uncared for and alone.
Now, had the Indians remained, undoubtedly far more would have died; as
doubtless, in Tierra del Fuego, the destruction of the comparatively
useless old women has often been the means of preserving the healthy and
reproductive young. Such acts surely must be greatly favoured by the stern
and unrelenting action of exclusive "Natural Selection."

In the same way that admiration which all feel for acts of self-denial done
fo