250 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION 



in some way. This demand for a recompense for 

 sacrifice has been felt in all ages, and has led to the 

 general promise held out to man of rewards after 

 death, which shall make up for the sacrifice of the 

 present existence. Our ethical nature demands 

 sacrifice and our reason equally insists that sacrifice 

 should not be without equivalent recompense. This 

 does not particularly concern us here, beyond em- 

 phasizing the point that conscience, from the stand- 

 point of the individual, has no rational basis for its 

 existence. 



From the standpoint of its effect on the race also 

 it appears at first that the force tending to righteous- 

 ness is not based upon intelligence. This new force 

 in a measure reverses that law of natural selection, 

 which among animals has been so necessary for 

 advance. With civilized man it is no longer the weak 

 individual that is necessarily exterminated, while 

 the stronger and better developed remains in exist- 

 ence. On the other hand, under the influence of the 

 moral nature, there is a greater and greater tendency 

 for the preservation of the weak. The erection of 

 hospitals all over the civilized world is a result of 

 the ethical nature, and they preserve the lives of 

 many who would otherwise be exterminated by the 

 rigid application of the law of natural selection. 

 Our inebriate asylums are designed to keep in exist- 

 ence as long as possible those whom natural selection 

 would declare unfit to live. Our jails and our plans 

 of abolishing the death penalty have an almost uni- 

 versal tendency to preserve, to the apparent detri- 

 ment of the race, manv who would otherwise be ex- 

 terminated as out of harmony with the conditions of 

 social life. Our institutions of charity are every- 



