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There is an interesting segment on page 252 of Howards End that deals with the notion of morality in combination with evolution. It is at the point where we meet Margaret in her process of thought on how to react to Henry’s affair with Jacky. The passage reads:
“Are the sexes really races, each with its own code of morality, and their mutual love a mere device of Nature to keep things going? Strip human intercourse of the proprieties, and is it reduced to this? Her judgment told her no. She knew that out of Nature's device we have built a magic that will win us immortality. Far more mysterious than the call of sex to sex is the tenderness that we throw into that call; far wider is the gulf between us and the farmyard than between the farmyard and the garbage that nourishes it. We are evolving, in ways that Science cannot measure, to ends that Theology dares not contemplate.”
The term immorality is what struck me the most in the passage, though it is full of other sticking points for analysis. The term immorality here is used to refer to sexual misconduct. Its interesting that Forster links this form of morality with sex because in the natural world sex is used for the good of evolution (to pass on ones on genes). It’s hard to say that it is morally wrong (immoral) or that it implies misconduct of any sort. In a broader sense it vaguely links back the article Anne posted on the origins of human morality through the study of primates, because based on what I know of the animal kingdom sex is extremely important and is unlikely to be considered an immoral act (in fact it may be incorporated into the “social rules” primates are said to adhere to).