ABSTRACT
Parental altruism is, of course, the strongest as well as the most universal form of kin altruism. As a general rule, that is. Altruism ought to be non-existent, or short lived whenever it does occur, if the Darwinian theory of evolution is true. By the very meaning of the word, altruism is an attribute which disposes its possessor to put the interests of others before its own. A less starkly individualistic version of Darwinism, the theory of inclusive fitness, was put forward by W. D. Hamilton in 1964, though J. B. S. Haldane and R. A. Fisher, decades earlier, had several times stated the germ of the theory. Inclusive fitness theory, though thoroughly in the spirit of Darwin, is unquestionably an addition to the older Darwinism. Darwin, like nearly everyone else at the time, had been completely ignorant of Mendel's discoveries when he died in 1882.
