Machine^ of Self-control. 707 



involved in this contest?" ''Yes, sah, de principles is all right, but 

 what good'll dey do me if I git killed? " "Is your life, then, of more 

 importance than the preservation of this great nation, and perhaps the 

 liberation of your race besides?" "Yes, sah, it is to me, sah," re- 

 plied the sable philosopher, and unless life in defeat promised to be in- 

 tolerable, he was right. 



Society justifies her claims upon the individual by the consideration 

 of the great benefits and services she has conferred upon him, and the 

 ability she possesses of rendering him miserable, but compliance or non- 

 compliance with these claims rests at last upon the individual himself. 

 It is in his brain that the claims of society on one hand, and her re- 

 wards and punishments on the other, are balanced. The results shown 

 in his action, indicate the respective strength of the detachments of 

 these two forces which engaged each other in his brain. If his action 

 prefers the interests of society with subordinate regard for himself, we 

 sa,y he acts from principle ; but if it prefers himself, with subordinate 

 regard for society, we say he acts from policy. And this conclusion is 

 not vitiated by the circumstance that policy and principle often coincide, 

 and that what may appear to be a line of principle in the action of an 

 individual, is in reality only a line of policy. And this leads to the fur- 

 ther question whether, since all the action is sifted through the individ- 

 ual, and receives its bias and direction from his personality, it is not all 

 likewise, so far as he is concerned, a matter of policy. The coinci- 

 dence between the interests of the individual and those of the commun- 

 ity are so close in nine cases out of ten, that a person pursuing his course 

 under the double impulse without analyzing it, does not realize how 

 much of either element there is in it. But let him analyze it, and he 

 will discover that among those nine cases out of ten, not one lacks the 

 motive of policy or self-interest, or would have been pursued if that 

 motive had been lacking. Now let us analyze the remaining tenth of 

 our actions, in which, I suppose, the interests of others form the prin- 

 cipal or exclusive motive ; as, for example, when we subscribe to a fund 

 to purchase an artificial leg for an unfortunate who has lost his natural 

 one, or to relieve starvation in some isolated settlement, or to help a 

 burnt-out or drowned-out community in some distant stute or country in 

 which we have never been nor expect to be, or when we, at imminent 

 personal risk, attempt the relief and rescue of persons in peril from fire 

 or flood or pestilential disease. Since such actions, equally with the 

 others, originate from stimuli which, arising from the environment, are 

 reflected from our organism with the quality and direction which our 

 personality gives them, it is evident that somehow that personality is 

 involved with the action. In a great man}- of such cases we cannot 

 discover that we are moved by what are called selfish or interested con- 



