Charles Darwin argued that the roots of human morality were not separate from animal life, and the surprise is what that does to civilization — manners, conscience, and restraint become not the opposite of instinct, but instinct complicated by memory, language, and the judgment of others

The objection Darwin knew would be hardest to answer was not about bones or fossils. It was about conscience. As long as the moral sense could be held apart from animal life, the distance between human beings and other creatures remained intact. Rev. Leonard Jenyns made exactly this argument in a letter to Darwin in [...] The post Charles Darwin argued that the roots of human morality were not separate from animal life, and the surprise is what that does to civilization — manners, conscience, an