52 SYMBIOSIS 



to Herbert Spencer, who may justly be regarded as the greatest 

 pioneer of scientific morality. In his search for the origin of 

 altruistic sentiments, Spencer begins with group-morality. He 

 makes no attempt to dig deeper for the roots of morality. 

 According to him,* the root of all the altruistic sentiments is 

 sympathy ; and 



Sympathy could become dominant only when the mode of life, insi 

 of being one that habitually inflicted direct pain, became one which con- 

 ferred direct and indirect benefits : the pains inflicted being mainbj 

 incidental and indirect. 



Here, then, we come across another fundamental criterion 

 of mutual behaviour, that is of moral conduct, i.e., the habitual 

 infliction or non-infliction of pain. And here at once we 

 an opportunity of showing what far more powerful natural 

 sanctions of morality exist in Nature than those thought of by 

 Spencer and his contemporaries. Nor can we be any longei 

 in doubt as to where in Nature these pre-requisites of " sympathy * J 

 are most ideally present. Surely not in the relation of depreda- 

 tion ; but certainly in that of Symbiosis, characterised as thi 

 is by the strictest law of reciprocity, i.e., of " live and let live,'* 

 or of biological co-operation in the widest sense. 



Spencer shared the common prejudice of his time as regards 

 the inevitableness and compulsoriness of habitual pain at th* 

 earlier periods of evolution, before the principle of " live am 

 let live " was introduced by man, as they believed. Speaking 

 of " Animal Ethics," in Vol. II. of the Ethics, he says that 

 ' ' Carnage and death by starvation have characterised the 

 evolution of life from the beginning." 



It is clear that such views could only have prevailed during 

 a period of neglect of the study of Symbiosis, which has shown 

 the principle of co-operation to have long ante-dated the advenl 

 of man. It is, I maintain, a general and fundamental natui 

 principle of which the application by man in society is only a 

 particular phase. 



Those views had, however, been accentuated by the false 

 bias created by " Natural Selection " in its crude and exclusive 

 form, which committed them to the emphasis of pain and suffering 

 as the main fountains of happiness, and (inconsistently with the 

 hypothesis of Evolution) to the postulation of a late and 



* Essays. "Morals and Moral Sentiments." 



