ALTRUISM ECONOMICALLY CONSIDERED. 53 



first, the fifth, the seventh, the fortieth, and other days after 

 birth. They can not even see the snn for the first time, and, of 

 course, can not be given a name, without a feast being held over 

 the fact. As to the women's special ceremonies, they are just as 

 numerous. 



"With reference to the rough sketch I have given of what I 

 may term the normal state of things in India, I would again draw 

 attention to the fact that I am far from saying that such is the 

 invariable rule, or from denying that there are whole castes whose 

 women are not secluded, and that many are educated. I feel com- 

 pelled to repeat that minute and endless variation is the chief 

 characteristic of Indian society, in case it may still be thought 

 that my analysis of a high-caste Hindoo woman's life is exactly 

 applicable to that of every woman one meets in the roads and 

 fields. The fact is, there is no subject on which it is easier to speak 

 to generalities from isolated facts, and it is so wide and complicat- 

 ed that one can hardly make a broad assertion without with perfect 

 truth being contradicted as to the specific custom at any given 

 spot, I merely say that the above description is, as fairly as I can 

 make it, applicable to the life actually led by millions of Indian 

 women, and it is the style of life toward which nearly all of them 

 unconsciously gravitate. — Journal of the Society of Arts. 



ALTRUISM ECONOMICALLY CONSIDERED.* 



By CHAKLES W. SMILEY. 



THE primary motive of human action has always been the care 

 of self, this being for man Nature's first and greatest law. In 

 his unthinking zeal he has often followed this to a degree unneces- 

 sary, and consequently harmful to others. In his savage state, 

 and especially in his primeval condition, where he was subject, 

 like all the lower forms of life, to the law of the survival of the 

 fittest, he could not consider others' interests because they were 

 so antagonistic to his own. Often one of two must starve, and 

 each would let it be the other one ; he did not even become con- 

 scious that he was so acting for a very long period of time. It 

 was the progress from a being not human to the being called man 

 when sufficient intelligence had accumulated to make him con- 

 scious that he could live and let live. That point was also marked 

 by and synchronous with the acquirement of such weapons and 

 such skill as enabled man to procure food enough to make the 

 starvation of some unnecessary. Then the war for the survival 



* Vice-President's address before the Economic Section of the American Association for 

 the Advancement of Science, delivered at the Cleveland meeting, August, 1888. 



