A Review of the Systems of Ethics Founded on the Theory of Evolution Part 28

We have already noticed some inconsistencies in Stephen's theory of human progress as merely that of an acc.u.mulation of knowledge. But he practically contradicts, elsewhere in his work, this view of advancement. On page 201 of the "Science of Ethics," he says distinctly: "As men become more intellectual, sympathetic, and so forth, they gain fresh sensibilities, which are not simple judgments of consequences. .h.i.therto improved, but as direct, imperative, and substantial as any of the primitive sensibilities." Even if this statement were meant to apply to the individual alone, a great difficulty must lie in the way of any theory that sensibilities so inherent, sensibilities "as direct, imperative, and substantial as any of the primitive sensibilities," will not affect the character of descendants through inheritance, in the same manner as these primitive sensibilities are acknowledged to affect it.

But elsewhere Stephen remarks: "An instinct grows and decays not on account of its effects on the individual, but on account of its effects upon the race. The animal which, on the whole, is better adapted for continuing its species, will have an advantage in the struggle, even though it may not be so well adapted for pursuing its own happiness." He is careful to use the word "happiness" here, but the division under which the sentence appears is headed, "Social and Individual Utility,"

and he distinctly states, on the preceding page, that the social instincts may be a disadvantage to the individual in the struggle for existence. He writes, in this connection: "The process by which the correlation of pernicious and painful states is worked out is one which, by its very nature, must take a number of generations. Races survive in virtue of the completeness of this correlation."[160] This is Darwinism applied to humanity; and, surely, since the human race has existed in the social state for very many generations, we must suppose, according to the theory thus stated, continuous organic advance, even if we did not consider the pa.s.sage in connection with the a.s.sertion of the gain, with increasing intelligence and sympathy, of sensibilities as direct, imperative, and substantial as any primitive ones. Again Mr. Stephen writes: "It is true, generally, that each man has certain capacities for moral as for every other kind of development, and capacities which vary from the top to the bottom of the scale. No process of education or discipline _whatever_ would convert a Judas Iscariot into a Paul or John."[161] Then education, the environment of civilization, is not the only factor in the production of character. Nor is it, according to Mr.

Stephen's own words, the only important factor. If capacities vary from the top to the bottom of the scale, then surely this variation cannot be an unimportant element of development. As a matter of fact, Mr. Stephen himself lays especial stress upon inherited characteristic as the basis of character. He says, for example: "The character is determined for each individual by its original const.i.tution, though the character is modified as the reason acts.... But, after all, we start with a certain balance of feeling, with certain fixed relations between our various instincts; and, however these may change afterwards, our character is so far determined from the start. Again, it is plain that this varies greatly with different peoples and gives rise to different types."[162]

Surely the formation of types at least cannot be a matter of the individual alone. Furthermore, Mr. Stephen distinctly a.s.serts a growth of intelligence in the savage--which we cannot suppose to stop short with the beginning of civilization--while he especially emphasizes the fact that the emotions develop concomitantly with the intellect. He says also: "We a.s.sume an organic change to occur--no matter how--in certain individuals of a species, and that change to be inherited by their descendants; and thus two competing varieties to arise, one of which may be supplanted by the other, or each of which may supplant the other in a certain part of the common domain. Some such process is clearly occurring in the case of human variations. Everywhere we see a compet.i.tion between different races, and the more savage vanis.h.i.+ng under the approach of the more civilized. Certain races seem to possess enormous expansive powers, whilst others remain limited within fixed regions or are slowly pa.s.sing out of existence. So far as human development supposes an organic change in the individual [?], we may suppose that this process is actually going on and that, for example, the white man may be slowly pus.h.i.+ng savage races out of existence. I do not ask whether this is the fact, because for my purpose it is irrelevant. We are considering the changes which take place without such organic development, not as denying the existence of organic developments, but simply because they are so slow and their influence so gradual that they do not come within our sphere. They belong, as astronomers say, to the secular, not to the periodic changes. Confining ourselves, therefore, to the changes which are, in my phrase, products of the 'social factor,' and which a.s.sume the constancy of the individual organism,"[163] etc. The pa.s.sage is of importance as acknowledging the reality of organic progress; but it is full of the self-contradictions which we have already noticed. It starts with the Darwinian a.s.sumption that organic change occurring in _individuals_ is directly inheritable by their descendants; this a.s.sumption, having done its office, however, is discarded, and we are told that any organic change cannot be that of individuals but must be that of societies, or at least that it must be of such sort that we have not only no need to consider it with regard to the individual life, but even no need to consider it in the study of the whole development of a society under civilization, or rather that we have no need to study it at all as soon as we have the "social medium"

to fall back upon for an explanation of progress; and finally, in direct contradiction to the a.s.sumption first made, a constancy of the individual organism is a.s.serted. This a.s.sertion is also in direct contradiction to the a.s.sertion before noticed that character is determined by original const.i.tution and that original capacity differs "infinitely"[164] in different individuals. We are indebted to Mr.

Stephen for a very minute a.n.a.lysis of the influence of even smallest details of circ.u.mstance upon character; surely, while we are thus emphasizing the delicacy of nervous organization that answers, with the sensibility of a gold-leaf electroscope, to the slightest variations in the environment, we cannot logically leave out of account the results of such variation in inheritance because these, too, are minute. And surely we cannot conceive that an organism so sensitive to the influence of environment is yet so inflexible and unalterable as far as the transmission of its changes to offspring is concerned. On any sound physiological theory, we cannot avoid supposing that all these minute changes in character which Stephen refers to the action of the social environment are accompanied by exact physiological equivalents. Then either these changes of organization are not inheritable,--in which case the organism does not propagate itself but something different from itself, and we have no alternative but to resort to some such theory as that of Weismann,--or else these changes are inheritable (subject, of course, to all the variations which individual circ.u.mstances of development must induce), in which case their inheritance must be of quite as much importance as their origin to any theory of social progress. As we have said, Weismann has gradually come to admit _some_ influence of the environment on the germ-plasm. We can indeed conceive of the representation of all previous development of the species in the individual, and of the determination of the degree of importance a.s.sumed, in the organism, by any particular acquirement or tendency by the coincidence of circ.u.mstance, but we can scarcely conceive logically of a propagation of organization that does not represent all the influences which have made that organization what it is. Even from Stephen's standpoint, it is difficult to understand how the organization of society, which he admits to be no organization on the plane of the higher animal, but of a much lower type, can be of so much importance in the advance of mankind, its variations the condition of progress, and yet the much more interdependent organization of the animal body be supposed to remain constant and take no part in this progress. It is difficult to comprehend how so much stress can be laid on the mere external influence of the units of society on each other, and, at the same time, the far more intimate and direct influence of parents on their offspring can be deemed of so little importance as to warrant our disregarding it altogether. It is especially difficult to understand how it is that heredity can be disregarded, not merely in its influence on the individual or even on the generation, but in all its manifold, intricate, and prolonged workings since man first extended family life to tribal organization; and this, too, in spite of the acknowledgment that progress through heredity is real if slow. It is strange that there should always be a tendency to draw a distinct line between social man and all the rest of the animal kingdom, as if, when society began, all former laws ceased from operation. Thus it is sometimes said that natural selection no longer acts on the individual because it acts on societies as wholes also; as well say that it cannot act on inner organization because it acts on the organism as a whole. As a matter of fact, it affects society through individuals, and the individual through, or rather in, his organization. If it is true, as Stephen a.s.serts, that change of social tissue is primary and fundamental to all external social change, it is not the less true that change of individual organization is fundamental to all change of external action.

No theory of development which goes beyond the individual life and considers the progress of society as a whole can scientifically disregard the element of heredity in this progress.

FOOTNOTES:

[141] I am indebted for these facts to Dr. Auguste Forel.

[142] "Ants, Wasps, and Bees," Chap. V.

[143] "Zur psychologischen Wurdigung der darwin'schen Theorie."

[144] Pp. 141, 142, translation by Henry M. Trollope.

[145] Eng. ed. Internat. Scientific Ser., p. 276; quoted from "The Zoologist."

[146] "Mental Evolution in Animals," p. 345; cited from an article in "Nature," 1883.

[147] "Animal Intelligence," p. 472.

[148] "Mind," Vol. VIII.

[149] Lubbock: "The Origin of Civilisation," pp. 9, 10.

[150] "The Science of Ethics," pp. 103, 104.

[151] Ibid. p. 109.

[152] "The Science of Ethics," p. 419.

[153] Ibid. p. 103.

[154] Ribot: "Heredity." Here we have examples which show that disease, as well as healthful organization and function, are subject to variation; and it may occur to us to wonder that no one has thought of referring these variations to some supernatural interference or special inner spontaneity; that theories which a.s.sume some transcendental agency or some spontaneously acting vital principle as the cause of normal, healthful variation have yet either left the variations of disease out of consideration or else simply referred them to influence of the environment. The reason for this, as far as transcendental interference is concerned, is evident; any theory of teleology in such cases must point to malevolent not benevolent design.

[155] "Heredity," pp. 124, 125. Quoted from the "Dictionnaire Philosophique," article "Caton."

[156] "The Science of Ethics," pp. 102, 103.

[157] "The Science of Ethics," p. 107.

[158] See previous observations on this subject, p. 408.

[159] "Heredity," Engl. trans., p. 84.

[160] "The Science of Ethics," pp. 91, 92.

[161] Ibid., p. 432. The italics are mine.

[162] Ibid., pp. 72, 73.

[163] P. 121.

[164] See above, p. 400.

CHAPTER VI.

CONSCIENCE

The exact circ.u.mstances which led, in any particular line of descent, to the final production of self-conscious altruism we cannot know. We may, perhaps, as has been hinted, trace the whole development to the original union of the s.e.xes in lower, as.e.xual species, and of mother and offspring; and we may suppose the final self-conscious altruism to have been led up to gradually by habit, in any case, the history of all function being gradual evolution. Thus we may suppose it possible that, in some cases, the care of offspring may have been preceded by a habit of care, on the part of the female animal, for her eggs, which, as habit, was pleasurable, but was connected with no consciousness of the offspring produced from the eggs until some new circ.u.mstance of environment brought them within ken. Of the development of habit in general and of pleasure in it, we have plenty of ill.u.s.trations in our own individual experience, and we can even watch, in our own case, the process of the increase of altruism along old lines as well as its growth in new directions; and we may thus gain a conception of what must have been the general nature of its earliest development, in any case.

In Volume III of "Mind," Paul Friedmann has an interesting essay on "The Genesis of Disinterested Benevolence," in which he relates the following: "A man had to throw away some water and, stepping out of his house, threw it upon a heap of rubbish, where some faded plants were nearly dying. At that moment, he paid no attention to them, took no interest in their pitiable state. The next day, having again some water to throw away, the man stepped out at the same place, when he remarked that the plants had raised their stems and regained some life. He understood that this was the result of his act of the day before, his interest was awakened, and as he held a jar with water in his hand, he again threw its contents over the plants. On the following day the same took place; the benevolent feeling, the interest in the recovery and welfare of the plants augmented, and the man tended the plants with increasing care. When he found, one day, that the rubbish and plants had been carted away, he felt a real annoyance. The feeling of the man was in this case real disinterested benevolence. The plants were neither fine nor useful, and the place where they stood was ugly and out of the way, so that the man had no advantage from their growth. Nor had the man a general wish to rear plants, for there were a number of other plants sorely in want of care, but to which the man did not transfer his affections. He had loved these individual plants." Friedmann says further: "Formerly rather hostile to dogs, now that I have a dog myself, I feel well inclined towards the whole canine species, but most to that part of it which has some characteristic feature in common with my favorite." Features of the first quotation may remind us of some former considerations of ours in which attention and interest were found to run parallel. We may take exception, however, to Friedmann's definition of the extension of benevolent feeling from an individual of a cla.s.s to the whole of the cla.s.s or to beings resembling them in any way as "a sort of logical confusion." This view has already been criticised. The adult being at least does not confuse individuals, or even if he may occasionally do so, such confusion is not at all the distinguis.h.i.+ng feature of progress in altruism; it is merely an accident, not anything that is characteristic. The recognition of old features in new objects is the opposite of confusion; it would rather indicate a logical confusion, a lack of intelligence, if we failed to remember that which has formerly given us pleasure, and to find, in similar objects, some renewal of that pleasure. It would have been just as logical, for instance, and more truly benevolent, if the man who tended the plants had cared also for the other plants mentioned as "sorely in want of care," and which he seems to have left to perish.

We may often notice the growth of altruistic from egoistic as well as of egoistic from altruistic motives, in ourselves; for retrogression as well as progression in altruism is possible with the individual. If we feel bitterly towards some human being, for instance, the best and surest remedy is to perform some act of kindness towards him. We may contemplate and carry out the deed with merely a sense of gratification and egoistic elation at our own generosity, but we are more than likely to experience some degree of change of feeling before we have finished.

On the other hand, our heart often seems to harden and fill with greater animosity towards those we have injured, the longer we continue this course of injurious action and the more positive the injury inflicted. A certain degree of generosity must, it is true, already exist in order that we may be able to show kindness to an enemy, just as hostility must also be present in order that we may be able to commence a course of injury or unkindness; but both kindly feeling and animosity increase constantly with their exercise. We are never exactly the same after our deeds that we are before them.

Says George Eliot: "It would be a poor result of all our anguish and our wrestling if we won nothing but our old selves at the end of it--if we could return to the same blind loves, the same self-confident blame, the same light thoughts of human suffering, the same frivolous gossip over blighted human lives."[165] And again: "The creature we help to save, though only a half-reared linnet, bruised and lost by the wayside--how we watch and fence it, and dote on its signs of recovery."[166]

Whatever the particular circ.u.mstances that led, in the particular line of animal descent by which the species we distinctively term human finally came into existence, to the extension of temporary to life-long a.s.sociation, and whether this life-long a.s.sociation began only with man, or earlier with his ape-like progenitors, certain it is that increase of numbers must finally condition society. The internal, like the external process, is a gradual one, an evolution; and we cannot, therefore, suppose society as life-long a.s.sociation to have begun with the existence of no altruistic feeling whatever. In so far, Darwin's a.s.sertion that the social instinct led men to society contains a measure of truth; but it is to be remembered that the social instinct at the beginning of social life cannot have been the same with the social instinct of present civilization, which is the product of long development; pleasure in function, its ends, and objects, increases _concomitantly with_ exercise. Darwin's statement is, hence, liable to misconstruction. There is a similar truth in Rolph's criticism of Spencer's theory that men adopted social life because they found it advantageous, on the ground that men must first have had experience of the advantages of a.s.sociation before they could have been aware of them.

But the experience which continually leads to a step in advance may not be, at every point, for every step, the experience of the individual or individuals taking the step; it is quite possible that some steps may be taken from the observance of the experience of others; at least this is possible if we suppose any degree of intelligence and reason in the individuals taking the step. The introduction of the idea of a calculation of advantages is, furthermore, exceedingly useful. For, while the "social instinct," the desire for and pleasure in all the various function connected with a.s.sociation with other beings, may be of a.s.sistance in bringing about any advance in a.s.sociation, the selfish instinct, already in existence before the evolution of any considerable degree of altruistic impulse, may influence and induce the advance, where the social instinct is not, alone, of sufficient strength. At the beginning of social life, as at every later point of advancement, motives are mixed, and selfishness may prepare the way for unselfishness.

At any point of evolution, there must be, among contending species or individuals, some who are stronger or who have, through some circ.u.mstance, the advantage over the others; given even a moderate number of individuals, and it is hardly possible that all should be defeated and destroyed in any struggle, like the famous cats of Kilkenny. This being the case, and change of organization being continually conditioned by contact with new elements of environment, advancement, evolution, becomes a necessity, no natural catastrophe occurring to destroy all life. There is no mystery about evolution in this sense. Advancement in society is still more comprehensible to us by the fact of the element of reason involved in it; from the beginning of life-a.s.sociation among human beings or their immediate progenitors, the existence of some more intelligent individuals than the rest, who will perceive the advantages of a.s.sociation, may be a.s.sumed. And thus at each step, as the growing density of population continually renders increasing cooperation increasingly advantageous, we may suppose the vanguard to be composed of the more intelligent and the more social.

Sympathy prompts not only to the conferring of pleasure, it prompts also to the prevention of injurious conduct, on the part of others, towards the being or beings with whom sympathy is felt. A conception of the advantage of mutual aid may a.s.sist as a motive in this. The earliest mutual aid was, to a great extent, one of cooperation against enemies.

In one way and another, this mutual defence must have extended to the compulsion of positive beneficial conduct, on the part of others, towards the being or beings with whom sympathy was felt. Such compulsion may be exerted by different tribes, or by different members of the same tribe, on each other; the means of compulsion are revenges of different sorts, benefit, a.s.sistance of some sort, being, on the other hand, often the reward of ready compliance. This compulsion may be felt as greater or less according to the degree of reluctance to perform any form of action required under pain of the penalty. If the thoughts are occupied with the possible reward, and not with the punishment, then no outer compulsion is felt, but a choice of advantage is made. This choice again may not be wholly one of selfish calculation; some altruistic feeling may be involved. A form of action at first chosen with reluctance, and merely because of the fear of punishment or revenge, may come to be performed later without hesitation, and more under the hope of reward than the fear of punishment; and this same form of action may come to be performed finally with sympathy as the prominent feeling, the hope of reward becoming more and more secondary. Each increase of sympathy, again, reacts upon the environment as represented by other individuals, and thus the relations and influence of men on each other become more and more complicated. Any habit of cruelty or hostility which has been, at former stages, united with prosperity may thus become, through the action and reaction of increasing altruism, a disadvantage to the individual member of any society; or it is also conceivable that a formerly advantageous egoistic form of action may become disadvantageous through the advent of some new influence from outside the particular society in which it is practised. Father Phil, in Lover's story of "Handy Andy," relates an anecdote of an engagement in Spain, in which the dragoons of a regiment, retreating under hot fire, paused at the crossing of a river to take up behind them some women of the camp-followers, who had difficulty in crossing, and thereupon found themselves followed by cheers, instead of shots, from their French foes.

I do not intend to intimate that the motive for the deed was self-interest; but it is easy to conceive similar instances in which humanity might become an advantage and be practised at first from self-interest, not by individuals merely but by a whole tribe; this must be frequently the case when less civilized peoples come in contact with more civilized peoples. And this leads us to remark that habits of sympathy and justice exercised within a people will be likely to manifest themselves in relations with other peoples also, in degree as the sympathy is real and the benevolence inward. But the att.i.tudes of different peoples towards each other remain long hostile, since the partial surrender of tribal or national interests necessary to compact often involves too great sacrifices to be acquiesced in at an early stage of development. And the individual is necessarily influenced, to a great extent, by the feelings of those among whom he is born, with regard to the hostile nation. But this is retracing our a.n.a.lysis.

Altruism is thus increased directly by the perception and choice of cooperation as advantageous, by the spread of altruistic feeling and the compulsion of the social environment, as well as by the higher means of persuasion and affection, in which altruism itself affects the increase of altruism; and it is also increased indirectly by the aid of natural selection between individuals, families, neighborhoods, and groups of all sorts, cooperation becoming more and more advantageous with the increased density of population.

It is scarcely necessary to remark that natural selection acts also with regard to the egoistic or personal virtues; for these have regard, primarily, to the preservation of the individual in the best condition for labor and cheerfulness. It is evident that in this direction also the moral must continually gain the advantage. Either the injurious is perceived and avoided, or the individual failing to perceive and avoid it suffers physical injury and deterioration, and, unless a different course is adopted in time, brings at last destruction to himself or to his stock. But our a.n.a.lysis goes further; for the egoistic virtues are evidently not purely egoistic; and society will come with time to insist on this fact, and to render these virtues still more advantageous and their neglect still more disadvantageous; while the growth of the altruistic feelings will infuse the individual with the desire to perform his duty to others in this respect also. The purely egoistic character of so-called personal virtues, for the a.s.sertion of which so much has been written, is a myth. No man can make a sot of himself or indeed injure himself in any way without reducing his power to benefit society and harming those nearest to him. Self-preservation and the preservation of one's own health may conflict with altruistic virtues at times; that is to say, virtues both of which are altruistic, though the altruistic character of one is more direct than the other, may conflict; in which case, choice is necessary. And it is strange to note, at this point, that just those systems which lay most stress on individual welfare, that is, emphasize the fact that the preservation of individual health and the development of individual capacity are advantageous to society, are the very ones that also defend the freedom of the individual to practise so-called personal vice. The two theories do not well accord; surely, if the individual is of so much importance to society, his vice cannot be without injurious results to it. Only when egoistic care for health has become infused with the higher altruism, does it become truly virtue; then care for self ceases to be the mere means to isolated pleasure, and becomes the means to the happiness of others where it was often, before, the means to their misery, and even their destruction.

In the evolution of higher animal forms from lower, the lower do not necessarily pa.s.s out of existence with the development of the higher; in society, however, the contact is close and continuous, and the compet.i.tion unremitting; there is, therefore, some elimination, though a very gradual one, of lower types. The lower forms may exist for a long time beside the higher; in other words, society as a whole progresses slowly on account of the immense complication of relations within it. We find it including many grades of altruistic and egoistic virtue, and can testify only to a progress that renders the extremes of vice and cruelty less and less the rule and more and more the exception.

And this brings us to the further consideration of a point not long ago touched upon, namely, the high degree of civilization attained by certain ancient peoples. Not the whole race of man, it is evident, advances together to higher grades of civilization, as not all individuals or all lines of descent in the same society fall under the same influences and advance at a like rate. At the present date, the greater part of Africa as well as portions of other countries are inhabited by rude and savage tribes, the rest of the world, not cla.s.sed as savage, representing very many different grades and phases of progress. After the conquest of Greece by Rome and of Rome by the tribes from the North, the higher degree of civilization of the conquered nations was partly lost by them and partly acquired by their conquerors; that is, nothing was really lost, but two different forces met and partly neutralized each other; the resultant represented, in this case as in all others, the complication, the algebraic sum, of the two. In the essay before referred to, Dr. Petzoldt calls attention to the extremely unique character of the productions of Inner-African tribes before they have come in contact with white men, and cites Bastian's testimony that even one short visit from a white man is often enough to destroy the peculiarity of the type. "New tendencies are introduced, and the stability is immediately diminished, though only to progress gradually to a newer, higher form." The comparative sparsity of the human race in ancient times rendered it possible for single isolated peoples to attain to a high degree of culture while the greater part of the earth was inhabited by the uncivilized; and the increase of the species since that time, though necessitating wider contact and closer relations, and so rendering the newer civilization necessarily a wider one, has yet not been sufficient to make isolated savagery in lands not reached by the spreading circle, impossible. The ancient civilization was lost, but not lost in the sense that its force ever perished; it found its full representation--but no more--in the result that arose from blending with a lower grade. The same process is being repeated wherever civilized man, on the borders of civilization, comes in contact with savage or half-civilized man. The two races may dwell side by side, separated from intimate a.s.sociation, but their contiguity is yet marked by a certain amount of change on both sides,--a change the greater the greater the degree of a.s.sociation and the greater the isolation of those on the border-lands from the rest of the civilized world, and the longer this state of things persists. We are here reminded particularly of Fechner's formula of the process of evolution, in which the concepts of isolation as favoring the steady advancement of the process on its own peculiar lines, and of new contact as new disturbance from which issues new development, are most prominent. If we regard especially the ethical features of this contact at the borders, it may be remarked both that savages gain gradually more humanity from contact with civilized nations, and that white men, on the other hand, lose, in constant contact with savages, some of the humanity which they have displayed in the midst of their own nation. They grow used to sights of cruelty, much of which it is impossible for them to prevent; they are roused to anger, hatred, and retaliation by acts of deception, treachery, and cruelty, and they find, moreover, that kindness is often mistaken for weakness by the b.l.o.o.d.y and revengeful people with whom they have to do, who are often used to respect only or chiefly the brute force which can compel obedience. I do not intend here to represent the white man as the incarnation of sympathy and humanity; even in the midst of society, as we have already sufficiently noticed, his apparent altruism may be, to a large degree, the outcome of selfish motives, natural tendency being restrained through fear of punishment or hope of gain of some sort.

There are grades within societies as well as grades represented by societies as wholes. But several things are to be taken into account in the comparison of the white man with the savage under circ.u.mstances of contact. In the first place, we have to remember that, while the white man is, to a great extent, withdrawn from the control of the society to which he belongs, secure from their judgment for the time being and with the prospect, often, of probable security from it for all time, since reports of his actions may never reach the ears of more civilized societies, the individual savage is still restrained by whatever of law and moral sentiment exists in his own tribe; his vengeance, whatever it is, is to a great extent under the control of his chiefs. Again, the power of the savage to inflict injury is not so great as that of the white man, who has all the implements of advanced cooperation at his disposal. The mere love of power always presents a temptation, and pleasure in demonstrating superiority is a common human emotion.

Furthermore, it must be considered that the opportunities for selfishness afforded on the borders of civilization are likely to attract, in the majority, just those men whose social ties and social instinct are weakest, whose greed perceives here the opportunity of unscrupulous gratification, and is drawn by it. And lastly, it is to be noticed that not by any means all the individuals belonging to more advanced societies who come in contact with savages use them with inhumanity, or even retaliate on treachery and injury. The great differences exhibited, under such circ.u.mstances, by persons whose opportunities have been very similar is a strong argument in favor of inherent, innate grades of altruism, and so of hereditary character. The same is true of the fact that the Greeks and Romans did retain much of their culture even in contact with lower grades of civilization, handing it down, in a degree, to this day; and that their conquerors only in the lapse of many generations pulled themselves up to this level, which was attained, at last, rather in countries removed from direct contact with it and so, we may argue, to a great extent, through their own natural evolution. The general a.n.a.lysis of the amalgamation at the borders of civilization still remains true in the long run, however individual savages and individual white men may represent exceptions to it.

Mr. Stephen's a.n.a.lysis of the development of altruism from egoism, while in the main true and one of the most minute a.n.a.lyses on this subject that we possess, opens, through its ambiguity of terms, the way to inaccuracy of thought and to errors of theory into which I am not at all sure that the author does not himself fall at some points. Starting with an implied definition of sympathy as actual "feeling with" other sentient beings through the intellectual comprehension of their emotions, and acknowledging that sympathy in this sense may not lead directly to altruism, he uses the same word also, later in the a.n.a.lysis, in the higher sense, and at some points appears to confound the two meanings; so that, as there is a similar ambiguity in the use of the word "idiot," or "moral idiot," in the same connection, his theory seems to fall into the mistake of a.s.serting the normal a.s.sociation of intellectual comprehension with altruism. He writes:--

"It is not more true that to think of a fire is to revive the sensations of warmth than it is true that to think of a man is to revive the emotions and thoughts which we attribute to him. To think of him in any other sense is to think of the mere doll or statue, the outside framework, not of the organized ma.s.s of consciousness which determines all the relations in which he is most deeply interesting to us." "The primary sympathy is, of course, modified in a thousand ways--by the ease or difficulty with which we can adopt his feelings; by the attractiveness or repulsiveness of the feelings revealed; by the degree in which circ.u.mstances force us into cooperation or antagonism; and by innumerable incidental a.s.sociations which make it pleasant or painful to share his feelings. _If by sympathy we mean this power of vicarious emotion, it may give rise to antipathy, to hatred, rivalry, and jealousy, and even to the diabolical perversion of pleasure in another's pain._"[167] "The pain given by your pain may simply induce me to shut my eyes. The Pharisee who pa.s.sed by on the other side may have disliked the sight of the wounded traveller as much as the good Samaritan. Indeed, the sight of suffering often directs irritation against the sufferer. Dives is often angry with Lazarus for exposing his sores before a respectable mansion, and sometimes goes so far as to think, illogically perhaps, that the beggar must have cultivated his misery in order to irritate the nerves of his neighbors. To give the order: 'Take away that d.a.m.ned Lazarus,' may be as natural an impulse as to say: 'Give him the means of curing his ailments.'"[168] "To believe in the existence of a sentient being is to believe that it has feelings which may persist when I am not aware of them. A real belief, again, implies that, at the moment of belief, I have representative sensations or emotions corresponding to those which imply the actual presence of the object. Again, a material object has an interest only so far as it is a condition of some kind of feeling, and, when the sympathies are not concerned, of some feeling of my own, whether implying or not implying any foretaste of the future. To take any interest in any material object, except in this relation, is unreasonable, as it is unreasonable to desire food which cannot nourish or fire which cannot warm. I want something which has by hypothesis no relation to my wants. The same is true of the sentient object so long, and only so long, as I do not take its sentience into account. But to take the sentience into account is to sympathize, or at least the sympathy is implied in the normal _or only possible_ case. The only condition necessary for the sympathy to exist and to be capable therefore of becoming a motive, is that I should really believe in the object, and have, therefore, representative feelings. To believe in it is to feel for it, to have sympathies which correspond to my representations, less vivid as the object is more distant and further from the sphere of my possible influence, but still real and therefore effective motives. Systematically to ignore these relations, then, is to act as if I were an egoist in the extremest sense, and held that there was no consciousness in the world except my own. But really to carry out this principle is to be an idiot, for an essential part of the world as interesting to me is const.i.tuted by the feelings of other conscious agents, and I can only ignore their existence at the cost of losing all the intelligence which distinguishes me from the lower animal."[169] A similar use of the word "idiot" occurs in the following pa.s.sage with regard to the relations of moral action to conviction: "It is a simple 'objective' fact that a man acts rightly or wrongly in a given case, and a fact which may be proved to him; and, further, though the proof will be thrown away if he is a moral idiot, that is, entirely without the capacities upon which morality is founded, the proof is one which must always affect his character if we suppose the truth to be a.s.similated, and not the verbal formula to be merely learned by rote."[170] "_To learn really to appreciate the general bearings of moral conduct is to learn to be moral in the normally const.i.tuted man._" Here the author adds, however, "though we must always make the condition that a certain apt.i.tude of character exists."[171]

Again he writes: "But it remains to be admitted that there is apparently such a thing as pleasure in the pain of others--pure malignity--which we call 'devilish' _to mark that it is abnormal and significant of a perverted nature_."[172] And in the same connection--where he is, at first, seemingly intent on proving only the normal connection of pain with the sight of suffering, admitting that this sympathetic pain may lead to brutality instead of altruistic action towards the sufferer--he says: "Sympathy is the natural and fundamental fact. Even the most brutal of mankind are generally sympathetic so far as to feel rather pain than pleasure at the sight of suffering. The sc.u.m of a civilized population gathered to pick pockets on a race-course would be pained at the sight of a child in danger of being run over or brutally a.s.saulted by a ruffian, and would be disposed to rescue it, or at least to cheer a rescuer, unless their spontaneous emotion were overpowered by some extrinsic sentiment."[173] And finally: "_The direct and normal case is that in which sympathy leads to genuine altruism, or feeling in accordance with that which it reflects_."[174]