INTRODUCTION 



vious chapter. But all these considerations are 

 in Fiske's mind subordinate to the question, 

 How did the social functions of primitive man 

 arise, and how did they favour an ethical tend- 

 ency ? The problem of the origin of morality 

 is thus for him identical with the problem of the 

 origin of society. Now we have already seen, in 

 connection with Fiske's general view of the 

 later stages of the social evolution, that the social 

 evolution of any period of humanity involves 

 social integration or consolidation, and the de- 

 velopment of such motives as tend to keep the 

 community together. But we now come to the 

 point where Fiske finds it necessary to try to 

 explain how the earliest communities began 

 to learn the art of living together in definite 

 social relations at all. Gregariousness is com- 

 mon amongst mammals, but how did gregari- 

 ousness turn into genuine social life ? Granted 

 a motive for a beginning of such social life, 

 Fiske then finds it possible to conceive how 

 the original motives of pleasure and pain be- 

 came differentiated into higher moral motives 

 through the workings of sympathy ; and on 

 this basis a transition to the usual deduction 

 of hedonistic utilitarianism seems to him com- 

 paratively easy. But the central problem is. 

 How a being who was not yet sufficiently gre- 

 garious to have become sympathetic, should 

 Ixxix 



