THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ALTRUISM 299 



tion or philosophy, but ignorance regarding those 

 upon whom they have worked their will uncon- 

 sciousness on the part of the exploiters of the 

 similarity which actually existed between them- 

 selves and their victims. However free an indi- 

 vidual may be from naturally selfish impulses, he 

 will never act in an altruistic manner towaid 

 others unless he is able to realise that these others, 

 are similar to himself, and that acts toward them 

 produce results of good and evil, of welfare and 

 suffering, similar to what these same acts produce 

 when done to himself. Altruistic conduct implies 

 not only altruistic impulses, but altruistic con- 

 ceptions as well. Tyrants hold, and have always 

 held, themselves to be an entirely different order 

 of beings from their subjects, and far more deserv- 

 ing. Read history it is a tale told over and over. 

 Between those who have ruled and those who 

 have served between the Ends and the Means 

 has ever yawned a chasm, wide, deep, and im- 

 passable. The exploited have always been, ac- 

 cording to their masters, a fibrous set, unfavoured 

 and unthought of by the gods, endowed with little 

 feeling or intelligence, and brought into existence 

 more or less expressly as adjuncts to their masters. 

 This is the theory of the savage, and it is the 

 theory of all those who have inherited his narrow 

 and unfeeling philosophy. The Gentile had no 

 rights because he was a ' pagan.' He was a 

 human being, it is true, and had come forth from 

 the womb of woman, just as the Jew had. But 

 he spoke a different language from the Jews, had 



