Part 27 (1/2)

The implication is that all this apparent altruism is mere automatism.

In support of a view similar to this, Benno Scheitz quotes the following case,[143] ”which Dr. Altum relates from his own experience”: ”'In the Gens d'Armes Market in Berlin, I saw several larks and a robin in a cage; the former cowered sorrowfully, with somewhat roughened feathers, in a corner, but the robin was in full activity. It ran to the food-cup, seized as many ant-larvae as it could grasp in its bill, and hastened with these to the nearest lark. The latter, however, did not honor the solicitous robin and its food with as much as a look. But scarcely had the robin offered its disdained food than it let this fall and hastened after fresh food, offered this, let it fall, fetched fresh again,--only to begin the same performance anew. As long as I watched this interesting spectacle, the robin was thus employed, and very soon the greater portion of the ant-larvae had been carried from the food-vessel and lay scattered before the different larks. And what was here the motive of the redbreast in permitting itself no nourishment (I did not see that it ate a single one of the ant-larvae itself), but carrying it all to its fellow-prisoners,--sympathy and love for the larks, who disdained all food, and who could have taken the same food for themselves, in the same manner, and with exactly the same amount of trouble? The redbreast had been caught and carried away from its young; the impulse to feed was strongly awakened and had before been strongly active, but not satisfied; the bird was obliged, therefore, to continue to bring food, although there was no longer anything to feed.'” The care which female animals of many species, when deprived of their young, often show for the young of other animals of the same or other species that come in their way is well known. Among domestic animals, the cat appears particularly susceptible in this respect, though comparisons here are perhaps scarcely fair, since, of all domestic animals that are habitually deprived of their young, the cat is about the only one that has the chance of coming in contact with young animals near the size of its own kind. The cat has been known to adopt young rats, chickens, puppies, ducks, and will generally, during the time of suckling, take up readily with kittens of another litter. Galton, in his ”Inquiry into Human Faculty,” mentions that the records of many nations have legends like that of Romulus and Remus, these being surprisingly confirmed by General Sleeman's narrative of six cases where children were nurtured for many years by wolves, in Oude. The working ants of certain species show as great care for the slave-larvae robbed from other nests as do many parent animals for their own offspring. Again, the care for their eggs shown by many animals who give no care to their young may be cited as evidence in favor of the theory of automatism. In the vegetable world also, similar protection is afforded flower and fruit, the most wonderful instances of such protection being, perhaps, those of the insectivorous plants.

But to all these arguments in favor of automatism may be answered: (1) that functions which are preserved and inherited must evidently be, not only in animals and plants, but also and equally in man, such as favor the preservation of the species; those which do not so favor it must perish with the individuals or species to which they belong; (2) that it cannot, indeed, be a.s.sumed that a result which has never come within the experience of the species can be willed as an end, although, with the species, function securing results which, from a human point of view, might be regarded as ends, may be preserved; but (3) that, as far as we a.s.sume the existence of consciousness at all in any species or individual, we must a.s.sume pleasure and pain, pleasure in customary function, pain in its hindrance; and (4) that, as far as we can a.s.sume memory, we may also feel authorized to a.s.sume that a remembered action may be a.s.sociated with remembered results that come within the experience of the animal, some phases of which may thus become, as combined with pleasure or pain, ends to seek or consequences to avoid.

There is no reason to be given why care for the young should be more pleasurable than care for eggs; the one may be as pleasurable to some species as the other is to other species. If we a.s.sume consciousness in Dr. Altum's robin, we may a.s.sume pleasure in the care of its young and also, as a possibility, pleasure in the results of such care, the preservation and prosperity of the young; whether the consciousness of the robin includes abstract concepts of preservation and prosperity, is another question. The human mother, too, is wont to be peculiarly tender to children in general, but we do not for that reason infer that her kindness towards them is mere automatism. There is no necessary opposition between reason and instinct, and certainly none between emotion and instinct. To the very functions from which we derive the most pleasure we are impelled by an irresistible innate tendency. In any particular case, it may be very difficult to determine the amount of reasoning power possessed by the animal, the exact relation of ends to means in its consciousness; but it may be remarked that there are human mothers who reason little with regard to the preservation of the species or other so-called ends secured by the care they give their offspring; the care is spontaneous, but may not be the less a matter of warm affection. It appears strange, therefore, that exactly that constancy and strength of tendency, with need of satisfaction by other channels if the usual ones fail, which we use as proof of extreme mother-tenderness in the case of human beings should, in the case of other species, be turned into an argument to disprove the existence of this feeling.

It is sometimes argued that the feeling of the parent animal in the care of its young is, in any case, merely one of pleasure in the activity, and has no connection with the good of the offspring. In such a case as that of the robin, where the effects of the care come within the experience of the mother, this is a mere arbitrary a.s.sumption, although direct proof of the contrary may be impossible. Naturally, in the case of an animal which cares for its eggs, but never comes in contact with the offspring that are hatched from them, it would be impossible to suppose any affection for the offspring as such; their existence does not come within the range of the animal's experience. With regard to an animal whose connection with its young is constant, the theory that pleasure in their care has no reference to their welfare, has no evidence to support it and is unjustifiable. If we cannot directly disprove it, we have, at least, the evidence of many facts unfavorable to it. The distress manifested not only by many mammals (who might be supposed to find physical discomfort merely in the absence of the means of relief of the milk-glands), but also by other animals and notably birds, in the loss of their young and even in any danger that threatens them,--the indescribably mournful sounds at deprivation, the after depression, and the capacity for self-sacrifice in their defence, would lead us naturally, from an unprejudiced standpoint, to a belief in something very like what we term mother-love in human beings. From Letourneau's ”Sociology based upon Ethnography,”[144] I quote the following: ”A female wren, observed by Montagu, spent sixteen hours a day in looking for food for her little ones. At Delft, when there was a fire raging, a female white stork, not being able to carry away her young ones, allowed herself to be burnt with them.... J. J. Hayes tells us of a female white bear forgetting the Esquimaux dogs, the huntsmen, and her own wounds, in order to hide her own little bear with her body, to lick her and to protect her. In Central Africa, a female elephant, all covered and pierced with javelins, hurled at her by the escort of black men attending upon Livingstone, was all the while protecting her young one with her trunk which her own large body enabled her to cover.... In Sumatra, a female orang-outang, pursued with her little one by Captain Hall and wounded by a gunshot, threw her infant on to the highest branches of the tree on to which she had climbed, and continued, until she died, exhorting her young one to escape. In Brazil, Sphix saw a female of the stentor niger who, wounded by a gunshot, collected her last remaining strength to throw her young one on to one of the branches close by; when she had performed this last act of duty, she fell from the tree and died.” In Romanes' ”Animal Intelligence,” occurs the following quotation from Dr. Franklin:[145] ”'I have known two parrots,'

said he, 'which had lived together four years, when the female became weak and her legs swelled. These were symptoms of gout, a disease to which all birds of this family are very subject in England. It became impossible for her to descend from the perch, or to take her food as formerly, but the male was most a.s.siduous in carrying it to her in his beak. He continued feeding her in this manner during four months, but the infirmities of his companion increased from day to day, so that at last she was unable to support herself on the perch. She remained at the bottom of the cage, making, from time to time, ineffectual efforts to regain the perch. The male was always near her, and with all his strength aided the attempts of his dear better half. Seizing the poor invalid by the beak or the upper part of the wing, he tried to raise her, and renewed his efforts several times. His constancy, his gestures, and his continued solicitude, all showed in this affectionate bird the most ardent desire to relieve the sufferings and a.s.sist the weakness of his companion. But the scene became still more interesting when the female was dying. Her unhappy spouse moved around her incessantly, his attention and tender cares redoubled. He even tried to open her beak to give her some nourishment. He ran to her, then returned with a troubled and agitated look. At intervals, he uttered the most plaintive cries; then, with his eyes fixed on her, kept a mournful silence. At length his companion breathed her last; from that moment he pined away, and died in the course of a few weeks.'”

Moreover, care of animals for other animals shows itself often where neither the relation of parent to offspring, nor the relation of s.e.x, nor even that of species, furnishes the basis. Aside from the friends.h.i.+p and self-sacrifice of domestic animals for man, friends.h.i.+ps, under domestication, between individuals of all manner of ordinarily most hostile species are reported. Such friends.h.i.+p is not at all infrequent between dog and cat. In the family of a relative of my own were once a quail and cat who were most devoted to each other. They would spend hours playing together, and were often left alone together for long periods. The cat never manifested any tendency to regard the bird in the light of food; she seemed, however, well aware of the danger it might be under from other cats, and invariably drove these away when they endeavored to approach the house. This cat was also friendly to a tame robin which preceded the quail as pet in the same family.

And furthermore, a.s.sistance is frequently given spontaneously where there has been no a.s.sociation before the act. There are a number of instances on record, and supported by good authority, where dogs have brought suffering individuals of their own kind to places where they had themselves received aid. Romanes cites from Mr. Oswald Fitch the story of a domestic cat who ”was observed to take out some fish-bones from the house to the garden, and, being followed, was seen to have placed them in front of a miserably thin and evidently hungry stranger cat, who was devouring them; not satisfied with that, our cat returned, procured a fresh supply, and repeated its charitable offer, which was apparently as gratefully accepted. This act of benevolence over, our cat returned to its customary dining-place, the scullery, and ate its own dinner off the remainder of the bones.”[146] Romanes says further: ”An almost precisely similar case has been independently communicated to me by Dr. Allen Thomson, F.R.S. The only difference was that Dr. Thomson's cat drew the attention of the cook to the famis.h.i.+ng stranger outside by pulling her dress and leading her to the place. When the cook supplied the hungry cat with some food, the other one paraded round and round while the meal was being discussed, purring loudly.” ”Mr. H. A. Macpherson writes me that in 1876 he had an old male cat and a kitten aged a few months. The cat, who had long been a favorite, was jealous of the kitten and 'showed considerable aversion to it.' One day the floor of a room in the bas.e.m.e.nt of the house was taken up in order to repair some pipes. The day after the boards had been replaced, the cat 'entered the kitchen (he lived almost wholly on the drawing-room floor above), rubbed against the cook, and mewed without ceasing until he had engaged her attention. He then, by running to and fro, drew her to the room in which the work had taken place. The servant was puzzled until she heard a faint mew from beneath her feet. On the boards being lifted, the kitten emerged safe and sound, though half-starved. The cat watched the proceedings with the greatest interest until the kitten was released; but, on ascertaining that it was safe, he at once left the room, without evincing any pleasure at its return. Nor did he subsequently become really friendly with it.'”

I cite still one other instance of animal affection from Romanes: ”One of a shooting-party under a banian tree killed a female monkey, and carried it to his tent, which was soon surrounded by forty or fifty of the tribe, who made a great noise and seemed disposed to attack the aggressor. They retreated when he presented his fowling-piece, the dreadful effect of which they had witnessed, and appeared perfectly to understand. The head of the troop, however, stood his ground, chattering furiously; the sportsman, who perhaps felt some little degree of compunction for having killed one of the family, did not like to fire at the creature, and nothing short of firing would suffice to drive him off. At length he came to the door of the tent, and finding threats of no avail, began a lamentable moaning and by the most expressive gesture seemed to beg for the dead body. It was given him; he took it sorrowfully in his arms and bore it away to his expecting companions.

They who were witnesses of this extraordinary scene resolved never again to fire at one of the monkey race.”[147]

As to the changeable and capricious appearance of the a.s.sistance rendered in animal a.s.sociations, by one member to another, it may be said that any being of a different species who could look into our towns and cities might easily find as great problems of caprice here as among the ants and bees. We, too, leave our fellows to perish unaided; we, too, kill off, by neglect and hard usage, often not only or chiefly our drones, but even some of our most industrious, useful members of society. With us, too, there is very often greater hostility towards enemies than kindness towards friends. Many savage tribes, that we certainly concede to be endowed with intelligence, could learn of the ants, rather than teach them, with regard to the duties of mutual aid.

With regard to other species than his own, even so-called civilized man is often eminently selfish and cruel. Among the savages the most extreme cruelty is often shown. Bain, in an essay ent.i.tled ”Is there Such a Thing as Pure Malevolence?” cites from a book, ”Siberian Pictures,”

together with mention of the pleasure shown by onlookers in the drowning of a man, an instance where boys seemed to find a genuine and peculiar delight in slowly roasting a dog to death.[148] And Bruce describes in his travels the feasts of the Abyssinians, where the flesh was cut from an ox alive and bellowing with pain. But our police courts frequently bear witness to the possibility of the most wanton cruelty performed by people within our own most enlightened societies, although we may claim that cruelty is not so general in civilized societies. I personally have known of a case where, a horse becoming suddenly ill and falling upon the road, it was prodded by its owner with a pitchfork until it died of its wounds; and of another case where a man fastened to a tree a harmless kitten that had wandered into his yard, and deliberately stoned it to death. Surely we have very little right to criticise the slaughter of animals by other species, while we ourselves name the taking of life ”sport.” Our criticism of the play of the cat with the mouse as ”cruel”

is humorous--if there can be any humor connected with cruelty--as long as we ourselves find delight in the prolonged struggle of the trout and the torture of the fox-chase. Perhaps the cat may be under the impression that the mouse takes pleasure in being played with; certainly we can believe that this is possible, when beings who claim to possess so much higher intelligence can gravely a.s.sert that the fox enjoys the chase.

Amongst so-called civilized human beings, too, the care of parents for offspring is by no means universal, and mothers are known whom not even the fear of the law can hinder from sacrificing their children by the slow torture of starvation for the gain of a few pounds or for even simple relief from the trouble of their rearing. The reports of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children show that not strangers but parents are the most frequent sinners against the child.

Nor is infanticide and neglect confined to the poorer cla.s.ses. I repeat, if a being of some other species enabled to obtain only such external knowledge of us as we have of other species, some being beholding us, for instance, from distant planets, should endeavor to form a theory of our inner egoism and altruism, of sentiment and motive, he might be as puzzled as we are when we study the conduct of bees and ants. Even the helplessness of the ant species, _Polyergus rufescens_, at which we often wonder as stupidity, has its parallel in some of the former slave-owners of the southern states of North America, who live in the utmost poverty and ignorance because they have lost the habits of industry and consider work beneath them. Mother-love is certainly the rule amongst us; but it is not more constant or self-sacrificing than with some other species, though it, in general, accompanies the child farther in his career. This rule is not, however, universal. Human mothers of a lower type, who show fondness for their children when they are little, often exhibit little or none for them after they have grown out of arms.

It is claimed that altruism was, in its origin, egoism. Everything depends, in theory on this point, on our definition of the terms ”origin” and ”altruism.” If we regard the life of animals in general or the life of any particular species as having been non-social before it was social, and as having become social through increase of numbers, the ”chance” a.s.sociation which arose naturally in this way being favored by natural selection, we must a.s.sume function fundamentally advantageous to self without regard to the results to other beings to have been primary, whether or not we call this function egoism. With regard to animal life in general, we cannot avoid adopting some such view as this, since we find few species forming lasting bonds of a.s.sociation, a large number forming only exceedingly short ones, and some forming none at all, and since we must furthermore suppose a scarcity of living individuals to have preceded their multiplicity. Moreover, we cannot suppose consciousness to have been absent, in the case of many of the animal species, during the whole of this development. And where there is consciousness, pleasure must be a concomitant along the line of development, and customary forms of action come to present ends, whether or not the individual has the abstract concept of ”ends.”

But we need to remember that even the human race has not yet arrived at perfection, and that even moral altruism (for not all altruism is necessarily moral) is not yet absolutely attained in any species. Our ordinary use of the term is progressive; that which is altruistic at one period of history is often looked upon, at a later period, as merely a higher form of egoism. This fact should be borne in mind when, in Ethics or Political Economy, we inquire whether man was, in the beginning, altruistic. What do we mean here by ”altruism,” and what by ”beginning”?

A similar criticism may be made on the rather more usual question as to whether man was, in the beginning, social; what is the beginning of our species, and what degree of a.s.sociation is necessary in order that the individuals a.s.sociating may be termed ”social”? The question is a difficult one to answer from any point of view. While the majority of human beings, even the most savage, show some degree of gregariousness, there appear to be some tribes that are even less social in their habits than the most of our ape-cousins. Mr. Dalton says of the savages of Inner Borneo that they live in the most perfect state of nature, do not cultivate the earth or live in huts, do not eat either rice or salt, and do not a.s.sociate with each other, but wander like wild animals in the forest. ”The s.e.xes meet in the jungle, or the man carries away a woman from some campong. When the children are old enough to s.h.i.+ft for themselves, they usually separate, neither one afterwards thinking of the other.”[149]

As to just what form the development of altruism from egoism may have a.s.sumed in the case of any particular species, or how the individuals of the species may first have been led to a.s.sociation, the state of science does not, at present, enable us to say. Most authors, indeed, incline to cla.s.s all social development as having its origin in some one form of family relation. Rolph, for instance, refers it to the necessary a.s.sociation of the s.e.xes, at certain times, for the purpose of copulation. Others regard the care of the female for its young as the primary form from which all social organization has developed. Inasmuch, however, as the line of ascent from primitive protoplasm to man cannot be regarded as straight, but has very many branches, it is quite conceivable that the development may have taken place in different ways in different branches or different species; and the very various forms which social organization shows in different species is direct evidence in favor of such a supposition. Thus it is not, for instance, in some species, the mother animal, but the male, who cares for the young, and again, in other cases, affectionate relations of the s.e.xes are not a prominent feature of the social structure. The att.i.tude of a swarm of bees towards the queen, her progeny, and the drones, presents aspects entirely different from those of ant-nests or human tribal or state organization. In some species where the female exhibits considerable care and concern for her eggs or offspring, there is no especial friendliness between the s.e.xes, and in other cases, where no care is given to offspring, there is still apparently some degree of friendliness, or at least of physical attraction, between male and female. It is not only conceivable that the habit of a.s.sociation may have been developed by different means in different species, but it is also conceivable that, in some cases, several forms of family relation may have a.s.sisted equally, and in other cases have united, even if not in equal measure, in producing the result. The a.s.sociation of parent with offspring, for instance, is in most cases impossible without some degree of a.s.sociation between the offspring.

However we may suppose social relations to have originated in the case of any particular species, whether through the s.e.xual or the parental relations or through both combined, and whether we trace these relations themselves back, in the one instance, to the original union of the s.e.xes in the individual, and propagation as self-division, in the other to the unity of mother and offspring before the individual life commences, or whether we simply begin with some non-hostile contact of individuals as already existent, it is evident that, with increasing compet.i.tion, cooperation must be to the advantage of those cooperating. Those individuals whose single strength is supplemented by the aid of others must succeed best in the struggle for existence. Moreover, with the exercise of altruistic forms of action, we must suppose pleasure in its exercise to increase, in so far as we suppose any consciousness at all in the animal performing the action. The greater the degree of exercise, the greater the pleasure connected with the action, and the more readily the organism will respond to conditions permitting its accomplishment; while repet.i.tion, again, must increase tendency to repet.i.tion. This is true not only of exactly the same form of action, but also of similar forms, that is, of forms having some like elements. The conditions of action are never exactly the same; the environment is continually changing; but the animal tends to choose, among possible forms of action, that which corresponds most nearly to most exercised and pleasurable forms.

At just what period we are to regard the altruistic forms of action as becoming in spirit altruistic depends, as has already been said, on our definition of the degree of disinterested feeling necessary to altruism proper, aside from our theories of the existence and form of consciousness in the case of any particular species at any particular point of development. In the case of even disinterested human action, the altruism is not generally, or at least in very many cases, wholly unmixed with _any_ thought of self, though this thought may not hold first place. If self-sacrifice be the test of altruistic feeling, then we must suppose the latter to exist, in some relations, even far down in the scale of being. In this case, just as in other cases where choice is necessary, the stronger tendency conquers even with the result of pain of disappointment in some other direction. The case of altruistic action is hence not unique in this respect, and it might perhaps be argued that such self-sacrifice would therefore be possible without any consideration or consciousness of the good accruing to others through its performance. But if we a.n.a.lyze the development of any habit, we find that the pleasure of the act speedily connects itself with all the constant results of the act that come within the experience of the performer of the act and are recognized as its results. Any result at first unpleasant must, if it is constant, either lead to the discontinuance of the act or else, with time, lose much of its quality of unpleasantness. Either the expected pain of this one factor is sufficient to counterbalance the pleasure awaited in the act, and a repet.i.tion of the act is thus avoided, or, as in all other cases of habitual experience, the pain or discomfort gradually diminishes, until, if the habit be long enough continued, pleasure takes its place. The pleasure of others must be a constant result of action that secures their welfare, and if this result comes within the conscious experience of the performer of the action, we can scarcely avoid supposing that, even if his action is in the beginning purely selfish, the pleasure of those benefited must come in time to play a part in the pleasure of the performer. The part it plays will not be, in the beginning, naturally, a very important one, but its importance will increase with time. If this is true in a measure even of the individual, it is doubly true of the species. Wherever, therefore, we may suppose the existence of sufficient intelligence for the inference of pleasure from its outer signs in others, it must be admitted to be possible and even probable that constant habits of self-sacrifice and helpfulness to others will be accompanied by some measure of altruistic feeling. And even if we suppose an insufficiency of intelligence for such inference, it is still possible and even probable that the constant symptoms of pleasure in others will come to be a part of the conditions of the pleasure of the individual or the species in whom habits of self-sacrifice have become constant, although their inner significance is not recognized. It may be objected that, if actual altruistic feeling were present in animals which show a certain amount of helpfulness towards others of their kind, this altruism would not desert these others at the very time of their greatest need or when any great peril to self is involved, or that it would show itself in many other acts than just those which, as in the case of the ants, secure the preservation of a society, or in that of some other species give a certain protection to the female during breeding time. The argument is wholly inconclusive, and has already been answered. The action of natural selection in the preservation of those forms of tendency that secure the preservation of the species does not annul the action of the will or render the presence of strong emotion in the direction of the tendency thus preserved impossible; on the contrary, we must suppose all tendency, in man equally with other animal species, to be the result of natural selection. And in man, too, altruism that is sufficient for some degree of sacrifice is insufficient for a greater. In man, as in other species, altruistic feeling and altruistic action vary according to the particular directions in which habit in the species and in the individual has been cultivated. Men and women who are not kind to each other will frequently be kind to little children. The average Englishman is kind to his dog in spite of his total indifference to the pain inflicted on the very nearly if not quite as intelligent fox; and he will grow indignant to the verge of tears over abuse of a horse, while he will regard the like abuse with little or no emotion when it is inflicted on a miserable donkey. I doubt if the average Englishman would shoot horses or dogs, even if they were good for food and useless otherwise, and abounded wild in Great Britain. But this is merely because a.s.sociation and habit have made him acquainted with the capacity of feeling in the horse and dog, and have accustomed him to humane treatment of them.

An argument sometimes advanced against the theory of a derivation of altruism from egoism is that such altruism has no premises or reasons; if, say the advocates of this argument, a man performs an apparently altruistic act to-day from selfish motives, and performs the same act to-morrow without calculation of the benefit to self to be gained from it,--if such a change were possible,--then this man must simply have forgotten his motives for the act. But this is not altruism proper. Such action is the result of a logical confusion, but it can never be altruism. Altruism proper has a motive, and this motive is the desire to do good to others. With regard to this argument it may simply be said that it is wholly untenable from any evolutionist standpoint; it destroys at once the possibility of any moral progress. Intended to defend altruism and moral principle in general from what is designated as degradation, it is itself degrading in its denial of the compatibility of natural and moral advance. It posits the a.s.sertion that nothing can ever become that which it was not from the beginning, an a.s.sertion utterly inconsistent with any theory of growth, whether evolutional or otherwise. It is contradictory, too, of the directly observed every-day facts of individual experience. The ends with which we perform our acts, and the same acts, certainly change from day to day. The adult would have reason for shame were the ends with which he performs certain acts the same with those with which he performed those same acts when he was a child. The emotions with which we regard life and its various relations alter every day. If the change from egoism to altruism could be p.r.o.nounced logical confusion, then all mental evolution must const.i.tute an increase of intellectual disorder, a continuous progress towards less instead of greater intelligence. Where is the beginning of feeling and what was feeling in the beginning? Of what nature were the motives of our ape-like progenitors, and of what nature the first motive that appeared in the universe? and how have we ever arrived at the possession of other motives than these? What a confusion worse confounded must be our present motives, and of what a chaos of thought and emotion must the human intellect consist! The origin of any such argument as this, intended to disprove the theory of a derivation of altruism from egoism, is probably in the failure to distinguish the fact that both altruism and egoism, as we know them, are comparative, not absolute. Naturally, absolute altruism could not develop immediately from absolute egoism, that is, the one could not change immediately into the other. But there are very few human beings in whom some degree of altruism does not exist; and all we may note directly of change of motive in ourselves, as well as all we ever could note of change in external action in other species, is gradual increase in this direction. In the individual case it is quite possible for change to take place in the opposite direction of the development of greater egoism.

In connection with the discussion of the development of motives, we may inquire what is the final end of action; I refer not to the ideal end but the actual end, although the two are not always distinguished in the answer to this question. The confusion of the two generally arises from forgetfulness of the fact that an end is the part of the result of an act particularly willed by the performer. The concept is again a teleological one, although often advanced, in some form, by persons of materialistic views. Thus some authors, looking at the process of evolution as continual survival of the fittest, and observing that natural selection thus tends continually towards health, so that the action of existing species is, in a large and ever increasing measure, favorable to health, a.s.sert that the latter is the end of action.

Others, in like manner and from similar premises, argue that the preservation of the species is the end of action; or sometimes the logical inaccuracy involved in making health or the preservation of species the universal end of action is partly concealed by giving the a.s.sertion the form that one or the other of these is ”the end attained”

by action. To these statements may be answered: The health of the individual, although it sometimes appears as the end willed, is by no means the constant and universal end, but, on the contrary, rather an infrequent end. As to the preservation of the species, the concept has never been heard of by a majority of human beings, and a thing cannot be an end to those who have not heard of it. It is doubtful, moreover, whether even those to whom it is familiar often, if ever, make it the end of action. With regard to pleasure, it has already been said that special calculation of the pleasure to accrue to self is by no means a necessary part of the motive to action. Attention may again be called to the fact that it is not the future pleasure that decides the will to action in the case of struggle of conflicting tendencies, but that it is the more pleasurable representation, and that it is present pleasure which decides in any case. Or, rather, it is not the pleasure, the feeling alone, that decides, for feeling is never found alone; it is always combined with thought-images. The strength of pleasurable feeling is the ”tone” in which the intensity of the function manifests itself, and according to which it tends to further expression in action. In the imagination of action and its results, or the thought of it, reflection may linger especially on any one of its elements,--on any part of the action or its results as inferred from the a.n.a.logy of past experience; the pleasure to self is not necessarily the element on which the mind lays stress, and the pleasure to others may be the element with which thought is particularly occupied and which turns the scale of choice; just as, also, in the actual action and its results, the pleasure in pleasure or benefit accruing to others may more than counterbalance the pain which some other inevitable phase of the action or its results brings with it.