77ie Evolution of Morals. 267 



sary issue of every act in pleasure or pain. A penalty 

 or reward attaches to everything we do : either the 

 individual or the race is benefited or injured thereby. 

 Personal desires and the interests of humanity often 

 conflict ; but the rival claims are being continually 

 adjusted in the equilibration which evolution is ever 

 more perfectly working out. Let us grant all this: 

 still the difficulty is not removed. If we were dealing 

 with objects without reason, we might calculate with 

 some confidence as to the operation of seemingly 

 conflicting forces ; we might compute their resultant ;. 

 but we have to do with men, who are impelled by 

 many motives, whose moral sense has to keep strong 

 passions in control. Let every member of the social 

 organization know and believe that the sole moral 

 quality of actions is to minister pleasure, and that the 

 claim of moral law is nothing else than a demand that 

 the individual should sacrifice a present and certain 

 to a distant and uncertain pleasure in his own experi- 

 ence ; or that he should bear pain sometimes to the 

 extent of sacrificing his life that a modicum of 

 pleasure might be ultimately added to the sum total 

 enjoyed by the race : what will his response to such 

 ethical doctrine be ? He is not bound to do or to- 

 refrain from doing because of any penalty attaching 

 to conduct; if there be penalty affecting the indi- 

 vidual at all, he may judge, perhaps, that in his present 

 environment it is as often against the right action aa 

 in favour of it : he is not bound to subordinate the- 



