The Evolution of Organisms 177 



than in the case of a human mother. In many 

 cases, among insects, the mothers never see the 

 young for which they labour. The mother mam- 

 mal has no prevision of the welfare of the species, 

 no control of her behaviour in reference to an ideal 

 standard. Good she is, but not moral. None 

 the less, there is objective self-sacrifice, and there 

 is so much of it and of kindred phenomena that 

 we must in accuracy correct the picture of Nature 

 "all red in tooth and claw with ravine." 



It is also evident that all the other-regarding 

 activities pay, and are the subjects of selective di- 

 rection. The selection-formula which applies to 

 the swiftness of the fox and the correlate swiftness 

 of the hare, applies also to the patient brooding 

 of birds and the carefulness of the mammalian 

 mother. Yet it seems absurd to deny that these 

 mothers love their children, or to assert that phys- 

 ical motives saturate their behaviour. Is there not 

 then some shifting of the theory's centre of gravity 

 when we expressly allow that love pays? The 

 whole law and gospel of Nature is not to be 

 summed up as 'Upstairs on your neighbour's 

 shoulders, living or dead, each for himself in the 

 scrimmage and elimination take the hindmost." 

 On a priori grounds it seems unlikely that struggle 

 is the only word Nature has to say to man, or 

 that what we recognize as one of the great laws 

 of moral development self-realization in self- 



