THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. 581 



be wiser and more manly to consider how far the first should go in 

 mitigation of the last. Is it stupidity or is it moral cowardice which 

 leads men to continue professing a creed that makes self-sacrifice a 

 cardinal principle, while they urge the sacrificing of others, even to 

 the death, when they trespass against us ? Is it blindness, or is it an 

 insane inconsistency, which makes them regard as most admirable the 

 bearing of evil for the benefit of others, while they lavish admiration 

 on those who, out of revenge, inflict great evils in return for small 

 ones suffered ? Surely our barbarian code of right needs revision, and 

 our barbarian standard of honor should be somewhat changed. Let 

 us deliberately recognize what good they represent and what mixture 

 of bad there is with it. Courage is worthy of respect when displayed 

 in the maintenance of legitimate claims and in the repelling of aggres- 

 sions, bodily or other. Courage is worthy of yet higher respect when 

 danger is faced in defence of claims common to self and others, as in 

 resistance to invasion. Courage is worthy of the highest respect 

 when risk to life or limb is dared in defence of others ; and becomes 

 grand when those others have no claims of relationship, and still more 

 when they have no claims of race. But though a bravery which is 

 altruistic in its motive is a trait we cannot too highly applaud, and 

 though a bravery which is legitimately egoistic in its motive is praise- 

 worthy, the bravery that is prompted by aggressive egoism is not 

 praiseworthy. The admiration accorded to the "pluck" of one who 

 fights in a base cause is a vicious admiration, essentially demoralizing 

 to those who feel it. Like the physical powers, courage, which is a 

 concomitant of these, is to be regarded as a servant of the higher 

 emotions very valuable, indispensable even, in its place ; and to be 

 honored when discharging its function in subordination to these 

 higher emotions. But otherwise not more to be honored than the like 

 attribute as seen in brutes. 



Quite enough has been said to show that there must be a com- 

 promise between the opposite standards of conduct on which the 

 religions of amity and enmity respectively insist, before there can be 

 scientific conceptions of social phenomena. Even on passing affairs, 

 such as the proceedings of philanthropic bodies and the dealings of 

 nation with nation, there cannot be rational judgments without a bal- 

 ance between the self-asserting emotions and the emotions which put 

 a limit to self-assertion, with an adjustment of the corresponding 

 beliefs. Still less can there be rational judgments of past social evo- 

 lution, or of social evolution in the future, if the opposing actions 

 which these opposing creeds sanction are not both continuously 

 recognized as essential. No mere impulsive recognition, now of the 

 purely-egoistic doctrine and now of the purely-altruistic one, will 

 suffice. The curve described by a planet cannot be understood by 

 thinking at one moment of the centripetal force and at another 

 moment of the tangential force ; but the two must be kept before con- 



