2o8 THE PSYCHICAL KINSHIP 



inhibition of a desire or instinct in the presence of 

 circumstances tending to render the desire or 

 instinct active — and this is obedience, and the 

 beginning of morahty. A dog that will not chase 

 a hare in the presence of his master may do so in 

 his absence. I taught my guinea-pigs to abstain 

 from certain food in their presence which they 

 wanted very much, and which they would have 

 eaten if they had not been educated to let it alone. 

 Sympathy is the most beautiful of all terrestrial 

 emotions. It is manifested, sometimes to an 

 exceedingly touching degree, by all the highest 

 races of animals. No other instances than those 

 already given can be mentioned here. It is suffi- 

 cient to say that the difference between the savage 

 — whose sympathies are so feeble that he has been 

 known to knock his own child's brains out for 

 dropping a basket, and who puts his aged parents 

 to death in order to avoid the burden of maintain- 

 ing them, and whose sympathies seldom extend 

 beyond his family or tribe — and civilised men and 

 women, who feel actual pain when in the presence 

 of those who suffer, and whose sympathies some- 

 times include all sentient creation, is much greater 

 than that between the savage and many non- 

 human animals. The frail, narrow, fantastic 

 character of human sympathy is the most mourn- 

 ful fact in human nature. ' Man's inhumanity to 

 man makes countless thousands mourn,' and his 

 inhumanity to not-men makes the planet a ball of 

 pain and terror. 



Volition is the power of the mind to act execu- 



