164 ETHICAL ASPECTS OF EVOLUTION 



It will be admitted that the community is bound to inhibit 

 the outward expression of any individual tendency, however 

 conscientious it may be, which plainly threatens to lower 

 the general level of morality. The distinction between 

 conduct which concerns a man s self and conduct which 

 concerns his neighbours is unmeaning. All actions, in 

 cluding speech, must necessarily affect others besides the 

 agent. Even if a man were to isolate himself in an un 

 inhabited desert, he would still affect the population statistics 

 of his country, and set an example which others might follow. 

 The duty, then, of the community to interfere extends to 

 every act that offends its moral sense and plainly threatens 

 to lower the general level of morality, even if that act be 

 the outcome of sincere moral conviction ; opinions that 

 have no effect on conduct do not exist, or if they did, would 

 be undetected. It is not in every community that a belief 

 in God, or in a future state, are commonly received as 

 doctrines of morality, but in countries where they are, the 

 state will surely feel itself bound to resist any serious attempt 

 to impugn them. 



Again, it will generally be allowed that, in the morality 

 of communities, one of the highest, if not the highest moral 

 principle is the safety of the state, but it is, at the same 

 time, on many accounts, one of the most difficult of appli 

 cation. What constitutes safety will always be a matter 

 of opinion, and it may be felt that when a state sacrifices 

 its remaining ethical principles to its safety, it only exchanges 

 a heroic for an ignominious form of extinction. 



Another reason which demands the exercise of extreme 

 caution in applying coercively the principle of salus populi 

 is that in very many cases it is extremely difficult to ascertain 

 how far the principle is pure. It is usually impossible, even 

 for the best-informed judgement, to distinguish between 

 a nation s material and its moral interests its wealth 

 and its safety. It is true that they often coincide, and the 

 same conduct may promote both ; but this only increases 

 the danger of self-deception in the many cases where wealth 

 is not synonymous with health. To coerce the individual 



