Wikipedia’s entry on “Evolution of Morality” points to the issue: “In everyday life, morality is typically associated with human behavior and not much thought is given to the social conducts [sic] of other creatures.”

It may look as if animals and morality may have almost nothing to do with each other, but in fact the social life of animals forms the very foundation of human morality. I suggest that we might value both our biological history and our morality more fully if we were more widely aware of this portion of evolution.

Charles Darwin took on that topic in The Descent of Man. He opens the book strategically by asserting that the best way to approach an inquiry into human evolution is to look first at all the similarities, physical and mental, that humans share with any animals. His extraordinary catalogue goes on for four chapters. I remember first reading them and thinking that after such an avalanche of likenesses it would be bizarre if humans were not descended from animals. Which is no doubt exactly what Darwin wanted me to think.

Sympathy and affection (wallpaper-million-com.jpg)

Among these similarities is social living.  Humans and social animals alike enjoy living in groups and they dislike isolation. They share activities such as raising young, procuring food, following leaders, defending the group. And, Darwin wrote, among the emotions felt by humans and these animals is “the all-important emotion of sympathy.” His animal examples include a dog licking a sick cat, primates caring for each other, young birds helping and feeding an older, weakened mate. What prompts such sympathy? Darwin thought the answer was straightforward: they have enough memory for a “strong retentiveness of former states of pain or pleasure.”

But while social living and empathy may be the foundation for morality, can one say that animals, like humans, actually have a moral sense, a conscience? Darwin’s response was careful: if the animals had enough brains, yes, we could say that. “The following proposition seems to me in a high degree probable–namely, that any animal whatever, endowed with well-marked social instincts, … the parental and filial affections being here included, would inevitably acquire a moral sense or conscience, as soon as its intellectual power had become as well, or nearly as well developed, as in man.”

In other words, the reason we don’t classify some animals as moral beings is not that they lack the necessary kindness or sympathy or sensitivity. It is that they lack the intelligence to perform certain mental operations that we associate with morality. Specifically, animals lack the awareness that their sympathy for another might be in conflict with one of their own needs and that they should make a choice; humans can fret over making that choice easily and often. Another mental ingredient of morality that animals lack, Darwin argues, is the capacity to worry constantly about how they are perceived by others. “Man, from the activity of his mental faculties, cannot avoid reflection; past impressions and images are incessantly and clearly passing through his mind.” So a dog licking a sick cat is displaying sympathy and caring but not morality. But a person earnestly weighing the social imperative to help hungry children against the inconvenience or expense of doing so is making a moral and socially-aware choice.

Darwin’s detailed example of this contrast is a chilling one. He describes how swallows, while tending their eggs and raising their chicks, will abruptly abandon the nests if their strongest migratory instinct come on them at that time.

At the proper season these birds seem all day long to be impressed with the desire to migrate; their habits change; they become restless, are noisy and congregate in flocks. Whilst the mother-bird is feeding or brooding over her nestlings, the maternal instinct is probably stronger than the migratory; but the instinct which is the more persistent gains the victory, and at last, at a moment when young ones are not in sight, she takes flight and deserts them.

If the swallows were human, the nightmare images of their freezing offspring would never leave them.

When arrived at the end of her long journey, and the migratory instinct has ceased to act, what an agony of remorse the bird would feel, if, from being endowed with great mental activity, she could not prevent the image constantly passing through her mind, of her young ones perishing in the bleak north from cold and hunger.

And the swallows would in fact be fully moral if they were capable of learning from their remorse and choosing a different path in the future. But only humans can do that.

 At the moment of [an] action, man will no doubt be apt to follow the stronger impulse; and though this may occasionally prompt him to the noblest deeds, it will more commonly lead him to gratify his own desires at the expense of other men. But after their gratification when past and weaker impressions are judged by the ever-enduring social instinct, and by his deep regard for the good opinion of his fellows, retribution will surely come. He will then feel remorse, repentance, regret, or shame. …He will consequently resolve more or less firmly to act differently for the future.

Swallows, Darwin wrote, will abondon their chicks… (dailymailco.uk)

if their instinct to migrate is at its peak. (theworldismyoyster-blogspot.jpg)

But human parents who fly south understand the problem.(bvonmoney.com)

So we make our resolutions and formulate our laws, creeds, and codes. But we couldn’t have done it without the animals that evolved to pass their lives together and have emotions about each other. They live out the kinds of social complexities that our moral codes attempt to resolve. Actually, our morality is doubly social: like some animals, we can feel the pain of others; unlike any animals, we worry what others will think of us. May we continue to build on both those foundations.