Charles Darwin's "The Descent of Man"

Natural Selection aided by Inherited Habits
The Descent of Man connected the habits and hereditary factors between man and animal. Darwin starts out by stating that man has inherited ‘instinctive feelings’ which are also apparent amongst animals. The difference which separates the two is that human feelings have further. Nonetheless, he states that we both attain this same “general disposition”. An example of this shared general disposition is the feeling of unease which is felt when one separates from his/her comrade. Thus, here both species are feeling some degree of love (“they would have “warned each other of danger, and have given mutual aid in attack or defense”. (Descent handout, 1) These can be further explained as the sharing of social qualities, which would include sympathy, fidelity and courage. Darwin states that these same qualities were in no doubt “acquired by the progenitors of man in similar manner, namely, through natural selection, aided by inherited habit”. (Descent handout, 1)

Fear of Prospering Degeneracy
In The Descent of Man, Darwin also discusses the ideas of natural selection. First he argues that natural selection is entirely positive and purposeful for a group of species, as it only elongates their chances for future survival. However, natural selection does not necessarily aid the most genuine, courageous, sympathetic or faithful people when the competition is between an individual versus another individual. It was scenario’s such as these that made Darwin worrisome for the future, for he thought that people with conniving and overall degenerative characteristics would come through as the survivors, only to further procreate and thus, promote degeneracy.

Tribe versus Tribe: In a scenario such as this the victorious tribe would be the one which includes the greater number of “courageous, sympathetic and faithful members, who are always ready to warn each other of danger, to aid and defend each other…[this tribe would succeed better and conquer the other]”. (Descent handout, 1) Darwin goes on to state that there is a greater advantage for the disciplined soldiers over those who are not disciplined, which is attained through a great sense of comradeship.
Individual versus Individual: In this scenario, there would be competition between two peoples of the same group. Darwin concludes that when it came to battle, the most faithful, courageous and sympathetic soldiers were the ones who would volunteer to battle first and thus, they would die in larger numbers. Therefore, the realization was that through natural selection and the “survival of the fittest”, virtuous people seldom survive as individuals (versus how they would survive when competing against a separate group).

Darwin feared that these degenerating characteristics would only be passed on to these people’s children, which would further produce self serving, treacherous, immoral humans. In other words, Darwin feared that our future would end up devoured by untamable degeneracy. Furthermore, Darwin states it as essential for our society to ‘eliminate’ these immoral or “worst” human beings for our civilizations to have a chance to progress. He gives examples of how “melancholic and insane persons are confined, or commit suicide…[and] violent and quarrelsome men often come to a bloody end”. (Descent handout, 4) Thus, it is important to prevent these peoples from reproducing in order to secure a progressive future, for like Darwin states, in the “eternal struggle for existence, it would be the inferior and LESS favoured race that had prevailed--and prevailed by virtue not of its good qualities but of its faults”. (Descent handout, 5)