72 The Universe and Life 



uncertainties of judgment; cases in which the Tight- 

 ness of an action can be judged only from later ex- 

 perience of its ultimate consequences. 



But the task of determining right and wrong is 

 rendered ten thousand times more difficult by the 

 fact that all life does not lie in a single individual, 

 by the fact that the living material is divided into 

 many individuals, and that these represent many dif- 

 ferent grades of development of life. One set of diffi- 

 cult problems arises from the existence of many 

 individuals of similar grade of development, all with 

 like claims upon life; the individuals who belong to 

 the same species or race or tribe or family. Another 

 set of problems arises from the fact of diversity of 

 grades of development; from the fact that there are 

 organisms of many different kinds, some representing 

 higher grades of life than others. 



Look first at the difficulties that arise through the 

 fact that there exist many individuals of the same 

 type; through such facts as that we ourselves, for 

 example, have fellow men. Each individual has his 

 own problems, his own insistent needs for keeping in 

 progress his own life processes, for promoting his own 

 life. These requirements may come into conflict in 

 many ways with the similar efforts of other indi- 

 viduals. This greatly complicates the task of the 

 individual. For individuals with little insight, appre- 

 ciating only their immediate needs and blind to more 

 distant consequences of their actions, it leads to direct 

 conflict with others ; to violence, to crime, to war. But 



