96 APHORISMS AND REFLECTIONS 



With all their enormous differences m natural 

 endowment, men agree in one thing, and that is their 

 innate desire to enjoy the pleasures and escape the 

 pains of life ; and, in short, to do nothing but that 

 which it pleases them to do, without the least refer- 

 ence to the welfare of the society into which they are 

 born. That is their inheritance (the reality at the 

 bottom of the doctrine of original sin) from the long 

 series of ancestors, human and semi-human and 

 brutal, in whom the strength of this innate tendency 

 to self-assertion was the condition of victory in the 

 struggle for existence. That is the reason of the 

 aviditas vitce^ the insatiable hunger for enjoyment 

 of all mankind, which is one of the essential con- 

 ditions of success in the war with the state of nature 

 outside ; and yet the sure agent of the destruction of 

 society if allowed free play within. 



The check upon this free play of self-assertion, or 

 natural liberty, which is the necessary condition for 

 the origin of human society, is the product of organic 

 necessities of a different kind from those upon which 

 the constitution of the hive depends. One of these 

 is the mutual affection of parent and offspring, inten- 

 sified by the long infancy of the human species. 

 But the most important is the tendency, so strongly 

 developed in man, to reproduce in himself actions and 

 feelings similar to, or correlated with, those of other 

 men. Man is the most consummate of all mimics in 

 the animal world ; none but himself can draw or 

 model ; none comes near him in the scope, variety, 

 and exactness of vocal imitation ; none is such a 

 master of gesture ; while he seems to be impelled 



