328 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



rior power ; or certain mental images, which the sight of offered food, 

 or of the apparatus in which it is placed, calls up, may inspire caution 

 and compel abstinence. Mr. Spencer here shows that the interest of 

 the individual is generally concerned in obeying the higher or more 

 lately-developed sense, instinct; or faculty, in preference to the simpler 

 and more primitive impulse ; and this distinction between actions in- 

 spired by more far-reaching and those inspired by less far-reaching per- 

 ceptions he considers as homologous to the distinction which emerges 

 in the human region and which, as civilization advances, becomes 

 ever more pronounced between right and wrong. In the one case 

 the individual weighs present gratification against his permanent in- 

 terests as an individual ; in the second he weighs his interests as an 

 individual against those of the social body in which he is included. In 

 either case he does well if he yield to the larger thought that which 

 summons to self-control, and which promises a continuance and en- 

 largement of his activities. From this point of view the conduct which 

 places a man in harmony with society is simply an extension, a further 

 development, of the conduct which places him in harmony with him- 

 self, by subordinating his momentary desires to his permanent inter- 

 ests. In the one case he says : " I have a larger life to consider than 

 that of this moment ; I have all my past, the memory of which I would 

 not wish to extinguish ; I have all my future, which I am not prepared 

 to sacrifice." In the latter he says : "I have a larger life to consider 

 than that which is made up of my personal pains and pleasures ; I 

 have inherited sympathies and acquired attachments ; the good will of 

 my fellow-man is much to me, and I feel that, apart from the support 

 and assistance that they render me and apart from the activities I ex- 

 ercise as a member of society, I should be a miserably contracted crea- 

 ture. Shall I therefore in the interests of my narrower self make war 

 upon my larger and better self by pursuing anti-social courses of ac- 

 tion ? " The argument in both cases is the same ; the only difference 

 is that in one case length of life is at stake, and in the other breadth 

 of life ; but all higher action, it may be assumed as a principle, tends 

 to life. " Do this and ye shall live "; in these words lies all that the 

 evolution philosophy has to teach on the subject of morals ; for they 

 summon to right action, and they point to the reward Life. 



I fail to see that under this mode of treatment the distinction be- 

 tween right and wrong is in danger of disappearing. Those possibly 

 who have considered it a pious thing not to know why right is right or 

 why wrong is wrong may resent being told that a rationale of the an- 

 tagonism between the two has been discovered. They may insist that 

 they have hitherto done right and avoided wrong from motives far 

 transcending in elevation any regard for perpetuation or improvement 

 of life, their own or others' ; and it would be ungracious, doubtless, to 

 contradict them. But, for all that, as a motive to sway the mass of 

 mankind, the thought that right action tends to life and higher life, 



