262 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION 



pand this doctrine a little so that it reads, ''The 

 greatest good for the greatest number of all ages," 

 we have the foundation, the defense, and the strength 

 of the ethical laws of the human race. Ethics sacri- 

 jBces both the individual to society, and the present 

 to the future. It leads man to-day into lines of 

 action calculated to produce the greatest good to 

 subsequent generations. It demands the sacrifice 

 of the adult to the child, and makes the world ap- 

 plaud when a mother yields her life in defense of her 

 helpless babe. As civilization develops the benefit 

 to posterity is more and more recognized as a forc- 

 ible factor. Savages are guided by their present 

 wants only, and are not at all disturbed by the needs 

 of their future years. They will even cut down a 

 tree to pluck its fruits. It was long in the develop- 

 ment of civilization before the idea of sacrificing the 

 present generation to the future was conceived. 

 Even to-day no race of men actually realizes it, and 

 no race is much influenced by this law. We can point 

 out the disastrous influence upon the future of cut- 

 ting down the forests, or of wasting the coal in our 

 mines; but the knowledge has little effect upon the 

 lumberman or the mine owner, and the consumer 

 does not use a pound less of coal because of such 

 knowledge. Nevertheless, it is evident that this bene- 

 fit to future centuries lies beneath most of the lines 

 of action toward which civilization tries to bend its 

 customs. If this is true, we can understand readily 

 enough why the ethical nation is bound to triumph in 

 the end, since, evidently, those nations in which the 

 present is sacrificed for the future will, in the future, 

 he in better condition than the other nations in ivhich 

 the future has been sacrificed for the present. Se- 



