LAWS CONTROLLING HUMAN SOCIAL HEREDITY 333 



never measures up to the standard which the altru- 

 istic principles of egoism have set. These standards 

 advance rapidly with each century, and the attempts 

 of the human race to bring the race up to the stand- 

 ards are never wholly successful. The failure of the 

 human race in general to hold in subjection its pri- 

 mary egoistic impulses and live in accordance with 

 the standards of society constitute what, in general, 

 we call crime, or sin, or immorality, or any other 

 names indicative of failure to live in accordance with 

 society's standards. From all this it will follow that 

 if these standards continue to advance, the human 

 race will never measure up to them, and will never 

 seem to be living very closely in accordance with its 

 ethical standards. To a superficial observer, there 

 will always appear to be a failure of the human race 

 to advance in morality because it will be about so 

 far behind the standards that are set by any partic- 

 ular generation. But if we remember that our 

 standards are growing and becoming more elevated 

 with each century, and that the human race simply 

 lags behind those standards, we shall see that our 

 conclusions as to the advance of the human race must 

 not be based upon the relation between the standards 

 set by ethics at any generation and the activities of 

 that generation; but we must make an actual com- 

 parison of conditions of things independent of such 

 standards. When this is done we find beyond ques- 

 tion that the twentieth-century man lives far more in 

 accordance with the standard of altruism and far 

 less completely under the control of purely egoistic 

 impulses than in any previous century. The human 

 race, then, even in morals, has clearly advanced, and 

 stands upon a higher plane to-day than ever before, 



