3i8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



greedy ; but they are not obvious. As society advances, however, 

 even this seeming success of the rapacious is found to diminish, though 

 as yet there has been no race or society from which it has been actu- 

 ally eliminated. Conduct which is imperfect, conduct characterized 

 by antagonisms between groups and antagonisms between members 

 of the same group, tends to be more and more reduced in amount, by 

 the failure or by the elimination of those who exhibit such conduct. 

 What is regarded as gallant daring in one generation is scorned as 

 ferocity in a later one, resisted as rapacious wrong-doing yet later, 

 and later still is eliminated either by death or nearly as effectually 

 (when indirect as well as direct consequences are considered) by im- 

 prisonment.* 



As violence dies out, and as war diminishes — which usually is but 

 violence manifested on a larger scale — the kind of conduct toward 

 which processes of evolution appear to tend, *'that perfect adjustment 

 of acts to ends in maintaining individual life and rearing new indi- 

 viduals, which is effected by each without hindering others from effect- 

 ing like perfect adjustments," will be approached. How nearly it will 

 ever be attained by any human race — quien sabe ? 



One further consideration, and we have done with the evolution 

 of conduct, the right understanding of which is essential to the scien- 

 tific study of conduct. The members of a society, while attending to 

 adjustments necessary for their wants or interests, may not merely 

 leave others free to make their adjustments also, but may help them 

 in so doing. It is very obvious that conduct thus directed must tend 

 to be developed. As Mr. Spencer says, such conduct facilitates the 

 making of adjustments by each, and so increases the totality of the 

 adjustments made, and serves to render the lives of all more complete. 

 But besides this (as he should also have shown, since it is an essential 

 part of the evolution argument), it tends to its own increase : for, 

 being essentially mutual, conduct of this kind is a favorable factor in 

 the life-struggle. 



We have next to consider what, seeing thus the laws according to 

 which conduct is evolved, we are to regard as good conduct and bad 

 conduct. 



* 5Iany overlook the bearing of imprisonment on the evolution of conduct — its in- 

 fluence (when long terms are considered) in diminishing the numerical increase of 

 particular types of character, and therefore in diminishing the quantity of particular 

 forms of conduct. 



