124 ETHICAL ASPECTS OF EVOLUTION 



reinforced, so far as any reinforcement is required or re 

 cognized, not by prospects of pleasure, but by penalties 

 for disobedience. The associations are almost exclusively 

 painful. Obedience implies the inhibition of our strongest 

 impulses ; disobedience brings with it the agonies of remorse. 

 If we had no sense of duty, we could pursue our pleasures 

 without hindrance, and halve our cares and our anxieties. 

 But notwithstanding all these drawbacks, if they are 

 indeed drawbacks, the conscience does not fall behind its 

 rival, either in its influence over conduct, or in the value 

 at which it is estimated. 



If pleasure is not to be identified with good, neither is 

 its opposite to be identified with evil. It is true that 

 in contemporary philosophy, pain is usually regarded as 

 the principal if not the sole form of evil, and it is 

 possible that most men, if an offhand answer to the 

 question were required of them, would at first be of this 

 opinion. But it is, I believe, certain that, if time were 

 allowed for reflection, and if their crude beliefs were sub 

 mitted to a Socratic cross-examination, their assent would 

 be withdrawn. They would readily admit that though 

 they preferred pleasure to pain, and though on this basis 

 it would be possible to construct a low scheme of values, 

 nevertheless, this preference of pleasure was not what 

 they admired or respected either in themselves or in others, 

 and that it was not the sole or even the principal deter 

 minant in any scheme of moral or ethical values ; that, on 

 the contrary, no action can be really great or heroic, or 

 deserving of our respect and admiration, unless it carries 

 with it an appreciable amount of suffering. Pain is an 

 integral in the total concept of duty, that is to say, of the 

 universal moral motive, and no actions, however right they 

 may be, are commonly regarded as duties unless they are 

 at the same time, to some appreciable extent, painful. 

 When we admire an instinctive virtue, which is free from all 

 sense of conflict, our feeling is not moral but ethical, and is 

 akin to the admiration which we feel for great art or great 

 literature. Pain is, what pleasure is not, an essential element 



