354 LIFE AND DEATH. 



philosophy is a life in conformity with nature. To 

 aim at the harmonious development of man was the 

 precept of the ancient Academy, formulated by Plato. 

 The Stoics and the Epicureans had adopted the same 

 principle. Physical nature is considered as good. 

 It gives us the type, the rule, and the measure. The 

 moral rule itself is exactly appropriate to the physical 

 nature. We may say that pagan morality was 

 hygiene, the hygiene of the soul and the body alike; 

 the mens sana in corpore sano gave individual and 

 social direction. The Rationalists, the philosophers 

 of the eighteenth century, such as Baron d'Holbach 

 and later W. Von Humboldt, Darwin, and Herbert 

 Spencer, have adopted analogous views. If these 

 views have been contested, it is because of the im- 

 perfections or aberrations of the natural instincts of 

 man. Also, if we wish to base individual family or 

 social morality on the natural instincts of man, it 

 must be specified that these instincts are to be 

 regularized. We must necessarily appeal from the 

 imperfect instincts of the present to the perfected 

 instincts of the future. Their perfection, moreover, 

 will only be a more exact approximation to the real 

 nature of man, and he, having avoided by the aid of 

 science the accidents which cause disease and senile 

 decrepitude, will enjoy a healthy youth and an ideal 

 old age. 



The reason of the discrepancies between instinct 

 and function in man is given by the natural history 

 of his development. We know that man has within 

 him original sin — his long atavism. He has sprung, 

 according to the transformists, from a simian stock. 

 He is a cousin, the successful relation, of a type 

 of antinomorphic monkeys, the chimpanzees. He 



