120 ETHICAL ASPECTS OF EVOLUTION 



that the prospect of pleasure could have influenced the 

 choice in the slightest degree. But the prospect of post 

 humous reputation enters very often as a part determinant 

 of conduct, and is not unseldom the sole determinant. 

 The principle which emerges is the following : it is true that 

 the prospect of pleasure enters into the motives for nearly 

 all kinds of conduct ; nevertheless, the choice between one 

 line of conduct and another is not always determined by 

 a comparison of the concomitant pleasures ; nor is the esti 

 mate of the relative values of one line of conduct and 

 another, when it is made by a disinterested onlooker, ever 

 so determined. 



It is difficult to insist too often and too strongly that 

 the prevalence of a motive, or its superior force when 

 measured by the extent of its influence on conduct, is no 

 test of its value, and that men do not regard as the highest 

 those motives by which they are most commonly guided ; 

 that, on the contrary, the frequency of a motive and its 

 value are in an inverse ratio. Ordinary is a term of 

 disparagement. Omnia praeclara tarn difficilia quam 

 rara is the leading principle of ethical valuation. Now 

 * higher and lower , when applied to motives, are terms 

 of valuation, and they are employed, even by hedonists, 

 to distinguish those motives which are the peculiar privilege 

 of man from those which he shares with animals. No further 

 explanation is called for, and the introduction of pleasure 

 as a criterion of value is otiose. But hedonists overlook 

 the distinction between influence and value, and it is not 

 equally plain that the higher motives exercise a more 

 powerful influence on conduct than the lower. It is not 

 easy to say in which way its recognition might have modified 

 their views. When it is recognized, the only possible con 

 clusion appears to be that, while conduct is determined 

 sometimes by one class of motive and sometimes by the 

 other, its value is always dependent on the proportion 

 which is borne by the higher to the lower in the total 

 amalgam of motives. 



These abstract distinctions are not difficult to draw on 



