THE EMOTION OF THE IDEAL 127 



nizes, while not discussing the full bearing of the fact, 

 that the altruistic emotions which, as here stated, 

 give that capacity for sacrifice upon which civilization 

 is founded are most highly developed in the young. 

 As the inborn heredity of the individual of our exist- 

 ing civilization develops, "the altruistic emotions," 

 Mr. Bateson asserts, tend " to weaken after adoles- 

 cence and to disappear as middle age supervenes." * 

 This is a true observation, in which is recorded 

 a fact, the application of which is of the widest 

 reach and import in the future of civilization. The 

 extraordinary intensity of the emotion of the ideal 

 in the mind of the child, and the part which this 

 faculty plays in producing that capacity for sacrifice 

 upon which civilization rests, must always be kept 

 in view. It is the basal fact in the science of cultural 

 heredity. Mr. Havelock Ellis repeats Professor 

 Stanley Hall's saying that "the normal child feels 

 the heroism of the unaccountable instinct of self- 

 sacrifice " at a very early age, even " far earlier and 

 more keenly than it can understand the sublimity 

 of truth." a The bearing of this fact and its physio- 

 logical import have only just begun to attract the 

 attention of science. But knowledge of it has for 

 long governed the direction of development in the 



1 Biological Fact and the Structure of Society. 

 1 Man and Woman. 



