130 ETHICAL ASPECTS OF EVOLUTION 



cases to which the term is more commonly, but not perhaps 

 more properly applied, that is, when the joy or the grief 

 or the desires of another, manifested in his actions, excite 

 similar feelings in the mind of an observer, it is not by any 

 means an invariable experience that we approve of those 

 sentiments in ourselves, or of the acts to which they prompt 

 us. Unless we approve of the feelings with which we 

 sympathize, our conscience will tell us that our sympathy 

 is misplaced, and ought to be suppressed. A very ready 

 sympathy is not always regarded as a virtue. It is easy 

 to be too prone to abandon oneself to its influence. There 

 are few more demoralizing influences than sympathy with 

 pain. It is through this that mothers spoil their children, 

 and old women their lap dogs. Rather than inflict a pain 

 which reacts on themselves they will acquiesce in the moral 

 ruin of their dependents. A man who takes a true interest 

 in the welfare of others will before all things keep his sym 

 pathy under strict control. The states of mind with which 

 we ought not to sympathize are many, and this implies some 

 other principle of duty. There is no single tendency (certainly 

 not love) which will bear a reference to the test of experience, 

 and it follows that the unifying principle, if there is one, 

 which connects the various reactions of the conscience, 

 must be sought elsewhere than in the motives by which 

 those reactions are originated. 



When we judge that anything is beautiful, it is because 

 it satisfies our aesthetic sense. To say that it gives us 

 satisfaction because we judge it to be beautiful would be to 

 reverse the natural order of events. The same thing holds 

 good of the judgements of the conscience. We judge that 

 an action is bad because it repels ; it does not repel us 

 because we judge it to be bad. With human beings judge 

 ments are practically a universal element in the operations 

 of the conscience, and it is on them, as will be seen, that our 

 moral principles are founded. The feelings of attraction 

 and repulsion and the judgements to which they give rise 

 in the consciousness, are the sole material out of which 

 moral systems have been or can be constructed. It is the 



