The Descent of Man

signal, to defend the community, and to give
aid to their fellows in accordance with their
habits; they feel at all times, without the stimulus
of any special passion or desire, some degree
of love and sympathy for them; they are
unhappy if long separated from them, and always
happy to be again in their company. So it
is with ourselves. Even when we are quite alone,
how often do we think with pleasure or
pain of what others think of us,—of their imagined
approbation or disapprobation; and this
all follows from sympathy, a fundamental element
of the social instincts. A man who possessed
no trace of such instincts would be an unnatural
monster. On the other hand, the desire
to satisfy hunger, or any passion such as vengeance,
is in its nature temporary, and can for a
time be fully satisfied. Nor is it easy, perhaps
hardly possible, to call up with complete vividness
the feeling, for instance, of hunger; nor
indeed, as has often been remarked, of any suffering.
The instinct of self- preservation is not