352 NATURAL AND POLITICAL RIGHTS vm 



obeying the law of nature and fighting tooth and 

 nail for its natural rights. This is the ne plus 

 ultra of individualism ; and, wherever individ- 

 ualism has unchecked sway, a polity can no more 

 exist than it can among the tigers who inhabit 

 the same jungle. It is, in fact, the sum of all 

 possible anti-social and anarchic tendencies. 



Even among tigers (or at any rate tigresses), 

 however, pure individualism does not always 

 dominate. When the tigress has brought forth 

 her cubs, and while she is nourishing, protecting, 

 and training them, she and they enter into an 

 association, formed of individuals held together by 

 the attraction of the instincts which constitute the 

 animal basis of sympathy, and thus constitute a 

 polity, however small its scale and short its 

 duration. And it will be observed that this most 

 rudimentary of polities, the family, could not exist 

 without the renouncement, on the part of the 

 tigress at least, of some of the " Rights of Tigers." 

 The tigress no longer acts upon her natural right 

 of eating all she kills, for example ; she acts as if 

 she were conscious of duties towards her cubs. 

 The cubs, on the other hand, are fond and more 

 or less obedient, acting as if they had correlative 

 duties towards their parent. It will not be sup- 

 posed, I hope, that I suggest that either tigress or 

 cubs are capable of entertaining moral ideas ; all 

 that I desire to point out is that, partly by instinct, 

 partly by the effects of very simple experiences, 



