540 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



become a source of misery. What happens in this case? asks the 

 philosopher whose treatment of the scientific aspect of duty we are 

 following. " First the domestic irritations must be relatively great ; 

 for the actions of selfish children to one another and to their parents 

 cause daily aggressions and squabbles. Second, when adult, such 

 children are more likely than others to dissatisfy employers, alienate 

 friends, and compromise the family by misbehavior, or even by crime. 

 Third, beyond the sorrows thus brought on them, the parents of such 

 children have eventually to bear the sorrows of neglected old age. 

 The cruelty shown in extreme degrees by savages who leave the de- 

 crepit to starve is shown in a measure by all unsympathetic sons and 

 daughters to their unsympathetic fathers and mothers ; and these, in 

 their latter days, suffer from transmitted callousness in proportion as 

 they have been callous in the treatment of those around. Browning's 

 versified story * Halbert and Hob ' typifies this truth.'^ 



We turn next from altruism in the family to altruism as an essen- 

 tial part of social conduct. 



The relations within a family present on a small scale a picture of 

 the relations among the members of a race or nation, as these in turn 

 present a miniature of the relations between the different races and 

 nations which form the human family. As men rise in the scale of 

 being, they pass from the sense of duty within the family to the sense 

 of duty between man and man throughout society, and thence — 

 though as yet this development is very limited — to the sense of right 

 between different races and nations. We have seen that undue care 

 of self is self -injurious and eventually must be self -destructive in the 

 family. There is a corresponding law for undue care of self in social 

 relations, as there is (however persistently at present the vast major- 

 ity of men overlook or fail to see the fact) for undue regard of self 

 among the nations. We may mistakenly regard undue care of self in 

 the body social as cleverness, aptitude for business, and so on ; and we 

 may mistakenly regard national selfishness as patriotism : but the pro- 

 cess of evolution is as certainly working toward the elimination of one 

 as of the other form of undue egoism. 



The main condition of social welfare and of social progress is 

 that the union which society implies shall work for the benefit of 

 those associated. If the balance of effects resulting from association 

 be evil, the body social must inevitably dissolve in the long run. 



Now, by laws of greater or less severity the members of a race or 

 nation may be compelled to recognize each others' claims. Or such 

 recognition may be assured by the fear of retaliation if the claims of 

 others are neglected. In such cases, however, the gain to each, or the 

 egoistic advantage of association, is small. Enforced recognition of 

 altruistic rights is in itself disagreeable. The more disagreeable it is 

 the oftener will cases arise where the laws have to be called into oper- 

 ation (and their operation is by our supposition painful), or where 



