ON HUMAN NATURE AND ITS CAPACITIES FOR VIRTUE. 91 



asks for a long time to effect a change, and a much 

 longer time almost a geological period to effect any 

 fundamental change in human nature. For that such 

 changes are infinitesimally slow is the one chief lesson 

 of the evolution philosophy. 



3. Further, man is not only an animal, he is more- 

 over, as all living beings, necessarily a self-regarding, 

 albeit that he is likewise, as Darwin tells us, a social, 

 animal. He is self-regarding as well as social ; but the 

 former in a more deep and abiding sense than the latter. 

 The truth clearly laid down so long ago by Epicurus, 

 revived by Hobbes, and assented to by a moralist in 

 many respects so different from both as Butler, that man, 

 in common with every living creature, seeks first and 

 before all else the conservation of his own being and 

 the greatest sum of well-being, remains an eternal and 

 necessary truth, which has received in our day a fresh 

 emphasis from biological science, and a new significance 

 in its bearings upon ethical theory. 



Every human being, however sociable, or sympathetic, 

 or capable of sacrifice he may be, yet resident necessarily 

 in his own isolated consciousness, which acquaints him 

 with pleasure and pain, happiness and misery, necessarily 

 seeks to minimize the one and to increase the other. It 

 is no objection to the doctrine, that the wise man some- 

 times accepts or even voluntarily incurs a pain that he 

 might have avoided ; for he does so .for the sake of a 

 higher satisfaction or to avoid a greater pain. It is no 

 objection that he often rejects the nearer pleasure, fearing 

 the distant and larger pain. Nor is it an objection that 

 the virtuous man often acts from conscience or a sense of 

 duty, which must bring direct and foreseen pain, without 

 any other future pleasure to set against it save the 

 feeling and satisfaction of right doing ; for even in this 



