CHAP, x "SCIENCE OF ETHICS" 103 



if reared among savages, is again beside the mark. The 

 question is not what they might have been, but what 

 they are. Mr. Stephen may settle it with other 

 authorities whether or not it is true that the " innate 

 faculties of a modern European differ little from those of 

 the savages who roamed the woods in prehistoric days." 1 

 Be that as it may, the educated faculties of a modern 

 European differ greatly from those of a contemporary 

 or prehistoric savage after his fullest savage training. 

 Else the two societies could not differ. Mr. Stephen 

 thinks he is offering us a contrast between the in- 

 dividual human organism and the social organism ; he 

 is only marking the contrast between two distinct 

 sciences, sociology and biology. 



So far, then, we have got the following account of 

 ethics from Mr. Stephen ; it is the law of the social weal 

 imposed, essentially by precept and example, upon in- 

 dividuals. But there still opens before Mr. Stephen 

 another problem. How does the individual come to 

 receive and obey the aforesaid law ? And why should 

 he do so ? He is led to care for others so we may 

 put Mr. Stephen's view by sympathy. To be aware 

 of pain of another's pain is to be more or less pained 

 oneself; to be aware of pleasure another's pleasure 

 is to have a pleasing object of contemplation, and thus 

 to be oneself more or less pleased. Two harps stand 

 near each other, you strike a chord upon one, the other 

 takes up the sound that is a picture of the origin of 

 moral feeling as Mr. Stephen states it. If any one is 

 inaccessible to these secondary emotions, evoked by 

 primary emotion on the part of his fellows, his intellect 

 is at fault ; he cannot have clearly understood that they 

 are really suffering or really happy. It follows that he 



1 p. 102. 



