ETHICS AND ALTRUISM 277 



morals, as well as "mind," are natural products of 

 antecedent natural causes. 



The dependence of each organism of the innumerable 

 host, upon all the rest, compels it to regard, by the very 

 deepest law of nature, the welfare of all. This is 

 altruism in the highest degree. Conscious altruism in 

 man, arises from this law. But when an organism 

 rises to the complexity of man, whose psychic life is so 

 complex as to appear as "free will," the units combine 

 into society for self protection by the like natural law, 

 and thus conscious altruism arises naturally from the 

 necessary dependence of each one upon the all. Thus 

 ethics and altruism naturally evolve from antecedent 

 causes that are perfectly natural. It is the survival of the 

 fittest that makes at first the family, then the tribe, 

 then the state and the nation, ending in the highest 

 form of religion, the brotherhood of man, and even 

 more than that. the unity of all nature, the absolute 

 dependence of each unit, upon the well-being and 

 adaptation under the existing law of evolution of every 

 other unit. 



' ' Nothing in the world is single 

 All things by a law divine 

 In one another's being mingle." (Shelly). 



Man is only a product of elemental morality. In him 

 it finds its highest expression; but without the natural 

 morality accompanying all the forms, whether inorganic 

 or organic, from which man has evolved, there could 

 be no such organism as man. 



THE FUTURE OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION. The civilization 

 of the past was an evolution by natural selection, 

 or the survival of the fittest, handicapped by super- 

 stition and credulity. It was at every stage an adapta- 



