The Management of Life 75 



the right ; it is the degradation or destruction of life 

 that is the wrong. But Hfe includes not the individual 

 alone ; it includes his associates ; it includes the other 

 pieces of the same living material of which he is one 

 piece; it includes the other units of the great organ- 

 ism of which he is one unit. 



This development of a regard for the interest of 

 others, of unselfishness and of a feeling for justice 

 among different individuals is, we must repeat, a 

 natural growth ; it is as much a natural growth as the 

 urge to eat or to protect one's self. It doubtless comes 

 into being later than these. But the later products of 

 evolution are as distinctly realities — are as "natu- 

 ral" — as are the earlier ones ; are natural in the same 

 sense as are the earlier ones; they have the same 

 claims to recognition as have the earlier ones. 



But the development of consideration and solici- 

 tude for the welfare of others does not prevail with- 

 out obstacles and conflicts. There are powerful in- 

 fluences working against these things; influences 

 working toward narrow selfishness. The center and 

 source of all such influences lies in one of the strange 

 and ultimate facts of biology. This is the fact of 

 selfhood, of individual identity and continuity; the 

 fact that each of us is himself and no other. Each of 

 us, as a feehng, thinking person, is tied completely 

 to one and to only one of the millions of pieces into 

 which the great living organism is divided. Each of 

 us can say that my whole possibility of experiencing 

 the universe is bound up with that one unit, that one 

 individual body and its fate, out of the millions that 



