8 12 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



duty (which many may regard as a mere trifle), may be not only per- 

 fectly consistent with regard for others, and even with devotion to 

 others, but may be absolutely essential to the proper discharge of our 

 duties toward others. In fact, it is little more than a truism, instead 

 of being, as many would at a first view imagine, a paradox, that the 

 more earnest our wish to increase the happiness of others, the more 

 carefully must we look after our own welfare. 



If we take a wider view, and, instead of considering a single life, 

 study the development of families and races, we still find the same les- 

 son. As the man who wishes his life to be useful to his fellows and to 

 increase their happiness must take care of that life, so he who would 

 wish to benefit humanity through his family or race must not only 

 nourish his own life and strength, but must develop those activities 

 which advance his own welfare and the welfare of his family. Other- 

 wise come, inevitably, the dwindling of the faculties on which his 

 own value depends, and the loss in his descendants of good qualities 

 which they might otherwise have inherited from him. Or it may be 

 that such qualities are inherited in less degree than had he duly exer- 

 cised powers and capacities which were in a sense held in trust for them. 

 We are apt to overlook the importance of individual action in such 

 cases, not noticing that the progress of a race depends on the aggre- 

 gate of acts by the individual members of the race. 



To take a concrete instance here, as of the simpler case : If a num ■ 

 ber of persons in any nation or at any epoch, impelled by a desire to 

 benefit their fellows, devote their lives to celibacy, they influence in 

 important degree the qualities of the next and succeeding generations. 

 They diminish the proportion in which their personal qualities — pre- 

 sumably valuable — will appear in future generations, and relatively 

 increase the proportion of other and less desirable qualities. This is 

 obvious enough. It should, however, be almost as clear that, in what- 

 ever degree such persons in a community as possess the best qualities 

 fail to advance, in all things just, their personal interests, they dimin- 

 ish the influence of the better qualities, not only in their own time, but 

 in times to come. If, to take another concrete example, all persons of 

 the better sort, forgetting their duties to themselves and their race, 

 enter of set purpose on lives of poverty, asceticism, and dreariness, 

 they not only diminish in large degree the good they might do during 

 life, but they injure their offspring, and, through them, posterity.* 



Under its biological aspect, then, the doctrine that care of self 

 must necessarily take precedence of care and thought for others, is 

 incontestable — it is the merest truism — ^though many speak, and some 

 act, as if the doctrine were iniquitous. 



* Many would probably be startled if a just estimate could be formed of the degree in 

 which the qualities of the civilized races of the world have suffered through the well- 

 meant but mistaken zeal which led large classes of men in former ages to sacrifice their 

 power to do good in order to do good. 



