PROBLEMS OF ETHICS 405 



can it maintain its existence. Better equipped we find the animal, 

 especially when it has gathered into social groups, either for pro- 

 tection against carnivora or for the breeding of progeny in common. 

 The young steer has an infinitely better prospect to maintain itself, 

 to grow up, than the single egg in the spawn of the sturgeon. 



So it is, before all else, the fact of social combination which attracts 

 to itself the attention of the revolutionary ethicist. His ethics is 

 social ethics. The analysis of the historical development of mankind 

 forms the standard, in which the social combinations have resulted, 

 and in which greater and world-inclusive formations have replaced 

 those earlier, smaller, and smallest, usually engaged in war with 

 each other. It is a long way from the time when hospes was equivalent 

 to hostis to international expositions, and the single stages of this 

 way reflect themselves in the moral behavior of the individuals. 

 The old question, which in so many ways agitated the English 

 ethics of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the question, 

 whether man should be regarded as an originally egoistic being, or 

 whether equally original, benevolent instincts must be ascribed to 

 him, is transferred by evolutionists of to-day beyond the realm of 

 man to that of his animal ancestors and, in this case, in favor of the 

 originality of egoism. But long before man appeared as an inde- 

 pendent species the effects of the life of the horde must have shown 

 themselves in him, since those communities only in which the single 

 members were bound to each other by sympathy had any prospect 

 of survival. It is therefore possible to speak of animal ethics. The 

 interesting attempts which Darwin had made in this field were taken 

 by Spencer, as a whole, into his system. It must, however, be con- 

 ceded that we must observe the full development of this process, 

 first of all, in man, and the tendency then consists in a constant 

 decrease of egoistic, as compared with altruistic, actions. How it 

 was possible that the individual was ever willing to renounce the 

 amounts of pleasure, which he could obtain, in favor of others, 

 Spencer skillfully tried to explain by the introduction of the egoistic- 

 altruistic feelings. These give the impulse to actions which are useful 

 to the community, but which give to the doer honor and distinction, 

 and thus, from egoistic motives, make actions which promote the 

 welfare of the community commendable. But those actions which 

 damage the community are visited with punishment of all kinds. 

 The theory of sanctions in Bentham and Mill here passes over into 

 the more extensive system of evolution. For modern theory of 

 evolution, by the broader biological foundation of its system, suc- 

 ceeds in explaining why even, in the case of those who cannot over- 

 look the consequences of such actions as are injurious to their own 

 person, these consequences are still ignored. The fact of the con- 

 science, for the consistent Benthamite a negligible quantity, forms 



