Note 27 — Chapter XXXIV · THE ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE ALTRUISTIC SENTIMENT

This observation was made already by Hutcheson (Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue, p. 219) and Adam Smith (Theory of Moral Sentiments, p. 199). The latter wrote, a hundred years before the publication of ‘The Origin of Species,’ that parental tenderness is a much stronger affection than filial piety, because “the continuance and propagation of the species depend altogether upon the former, and not upon the latter.”