PSYCHOLOGICAL AND ETHICAL ASPECTS. 279 



In his recent important work on the " Origin of Species," 

 Professor Eimer maintains a similar view. He briefly criticises 

 the Darwinian explanation, which appears to him to postulate too 

 many happy combinations. He maintains that the ancestral 

 cuckoo acted deliberately in the trick, and some of this delibe- 

 rateness of device may still persist. The explanation of the 

 unnatural habit is to be found in the bird's whole character and 

 mode of life. In this connection Eimer emphasises (a) the 

 vagabond, restless habit ; (b) the looseness of the sex relations, 

 strong in passion, weak in love ; {c) the irregular and gluttonous 

 nutrition considered in relation to reproductive stimulus ; (d) 

 the slow laying of the eggs, itself dependent upon nutrition, and 

 pointing to physiological conditions which modify even the 

 deeply-rooted impulse and instinct to brood ; {e) the degenera- 

 tion of social instincts, and the preponderance of the egoistic. 



^ 7. Egoism and Altrnisni. — I'he optimism which finds in 

 animal life only " one hymn of love " is inaccurate, like the 

 pessimism which sees throughout nothing but selfishness. Littre, 

 Leconte, and some others less definitely, have more reasonably 

 recognised the co-existence of twin streams of egoism and 

 altruism, which often merge for a space without losing their 

 distinctness, and are traceable to a common origin in the 

 simplest forms of life. In the hunger and reproductive attrac- 

 tions of the lowest organisms, the self-regarding and other- 

 regarding activities of the higher find their starting-point. 

 Though some vague consciousness is perhaps co-existent with 

 life itself, we can only speak with confidence of psychical 

 egoism and altruism after a central nervous system has been 

 definitely established. At the same time, the activities of even 

 the lowest organisms are often distinctly referable to either 

 category. 



A simple organism, which merely feeds and grows, and 

 liberates superfluous portions of its substance to start new exist- 

 ences, is plainly living an egoistic and individualistic life. But 

 whenever we find the occurrence of close association with another 

 form, we find the first rude hints of love. It may still be almost 

 wholly an organic hunger which prompts the union, but it is 

 the beginning of life not wholly individualistic. Hardly dis- 

 tinguishable at the outset, the primitive hunger and love become 

 the starting-points of divergent lines of egoistic and altruistic 

 emotion and activity. 



The differentiation of separate sexes ; the production of 



