ETHICS AND THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE. 231 



the strength of her affections. She will endure a painful death 

 to save her children from suffering. The animal sacrifices herself, 

 but without consciousness and therefore without moral worth. 

 This is merely the most striking exemplification of the general 

 process of the development of morality. Conduct is first regarded 

 purely with a view to the effects upon the agent, and is therefore 

 enforced by extrinsic penalties, by consequences, that is, supposed 

 to be attached to it by the will of some ruler, natural or supernat- 

 ural. The instinct which comes to regard such conduct as bad in 

 itself, which implies a dislike of giving pain to others, not merely 

 a dislike to the gallows, grows up under such protection, and in 

 the really moralized being acquires a strength which makes the 

 external penalty superfluous. This, indubitably, is the greatest 

 of all changes, the critical fact which decides whether we are to 

 regard conduct simply as useful or also to regard it as moral in 

 the strictest sense. But I should still call it a development and 

 not a reversal of the previous process. The conduct which we 

 call virtuous is the same conduct externally which we before re- 

 garded as useful. The difference is that the simple fact of its 

 utility that is, of its utility to others and to the race in general 

 has now become the sufficient motive for the action as well as 

 the implicit cause of the action. In the earlier stages, when no 

 true sympathy existed, men and animals were still forced to act 

 in a certain way because it was beneficial to others. They now 

 act in that way because they perceive it to be beneficial to others. 

 The whole history of moral evolution seems to imply this. We 

 may go back to a period at which the moral law is identified with 

 the general customs of the race ; at which there is no perception 

 of any clear distinction between that which is moral and that 

 which is simply customary ; between that which is imposed by a 

 law in the strict sense and that which is dictated by general moral 

 principles. In such a state of things, the motives for obedience 

 partake of the nature of " blind instincts." No definite reason for 

 them is present to the mind of the agent, and it does not occur to 

 him even to demand a reason. " Our father did so and we do so " 

 is the sole and sufficient explanation of their conduct. Thus in- 

 stinct again may be traced back by evolutionists to the earliest 

 period at which the instincts implied in the relations between 

 the sexes, or between parents and offspring, existed. They were 

 the germ from which has sprung all morality such as we now 

 recognize. 



Morality, then, implies the development of certain instincts 

 which are essential to the race, but which may in an indefinite 

 number of cases be injurious to the individual. The particular 

 mother is killed because she obeys her natural instincts ; but if it 

 were not for mothers and their instincts, the race would come to 



