CHAPTER XI 



THE RELATION OF MORALITY AND SELF-INTEREST* 



IN the Darwinian theory of social progress moral- 

 ity is synonymous with the welfare of the com- 

 munity and therefore with the greatest expansion 

 of life for the individual. For one of its roots 

 it goes back through the social instincts and 

 the parental affections to the great fundamental 

 factor of love, but it has also another root in intel- 

 ligence, which brings to morality a powerful re- 

 enforcement by showing that it is identical with 

 the highest self-interest of the individual. 



But the belief is almost universal that morality 

 and self-interest are opposed, not only in the case 

 of individuals, but in the case of groups of individ- 

 uals or nations. A moral action is considered to 

 be an action in which the individual sacrifices his 

 own welfare for that of others, and is therefore an 

 action which is diametrically opposed to his own 

 highest interest. Lord Hugh Cecil has clearly 



' Novikov has replied at length to the various objections 

 raised against this view of enlightened self-interest as the rational 

 basis of morality in his La morale et VinlerU dans les rapports 

 individuels et inter nationaux. (Alcan, Paris, 1912). 



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