262 THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS. 



Simple as seems the method by which the first few 

 sparks of Love were nursed into flame in the bosom of 

 Maternity, the details of the evolution are so intricate 

 as to require a chapter to themselves. But the 

 emphasis which Nature puts on this process may be 

 judged of by the fact that one-half the human race 

 had to be set apart to sustain and perfect it. To the 

 evolutionist who discerns the true proportions of the 

 forces which made for the Ascent of Man, one of the 

 two or three great events in the natural history of the 

 world was the institution of sex. It is here that the 

 master-forces which were to dominate the latest and 

 highest stages of the process start; here, specialized 

 into Egoism and Altruism, they part ; and here, each 

 having run its different course, they meet to distrib- 

 ute their gains to a succeeding race. With the 

 initial impulses of their sex strengthened by the 

 different life-routine to which each led, these two 

 forces ran their course through history, determining 

 by their ceaseless reactions the order and progress of 



vation of the species ; those which do not so favor it must perish 

 with the individuals or species to which they belong ; (2) that it 

 cannot, indeed, be assumed that a result which bas never come 

 within the experience of the species can be willed as an end, al- 

 though, with the species, function securing results which, from a 

 human point of view, might be regarded as such, may be pre- 

 served; but (3) that, as far as we assume the existence of con- 

 sciousness at all in any species or individual, we must assume 

 pleasure and pain, pleasure in customary function, pain in its 

 hindrance; and (4) that, as far as we can assume memory, we 

 may also feel authorized to assume that a remembered action 

 may be associated with remembered results that come within the 

 experience of the animal, some phases of which may thus become, 

 as combined with pleasure or pain, ends to seek or consequences 

 to avoid." — Evolutional Ethics, p. 386. 



