GENESIS OF MAN, MORALLY 



distress we do it only because it pains us to see 

 him suffer. This is true ; but when the pain 

 occasioned by the sight of another's suffering, 

 or by the idea of suffering and wrong when 

 generalized and detached from the incidents of 

 particular cases, becomes so strong as to deter- 

 mine our actions, then the chasm is entirely 

 crossed which divides us psychically from the 

 brutes. Between the Fiji who keenly relishes 

 the shrieks of his human victim, and Uncle 

 Toby, who could not kill a fly and pitied even 

 the Devil, the difference has come to be generic. 

 And when this kind of self-pleasing is carried 

 so far as to lead a man to risk his life in the 

 effort to rescue a stranger, or perhaps even an 

 enemy, from fire, or drowning, it is so widely 

 removed from what we mean when we speak 

 of selfishness as to be antithetical to it. We 

 do not describe the workings of Shakespeare's 

 genius as reflex actions, though all intelligence 

 was originally reflex action. Neither are we 

 justified in describing as selfish the actions which 

 are dictated by sympathy, though all sympathy 

 is in its origin a kind of self-pleasing. 



As already shown in describing the chief 

 characteristics of the evolution of society, the 

 primary cause which has developed sympathy at 

 the expense of the egoistic instincts has been the 

 continued integration of communities, originally 

 mere tribes or clans, into social aggregates of 

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