376 



MIND IN EVOLUTION 



CHAP. 



One need not waste words in showing that this relation 

 to other individuals must profoundly modify the workings 

 of " self-assertion," either by directly thwarting it, as when 

 love enjoins self-sacrifice, or perhaps by entering into and 

 modifying it, as when a man makes the pursuit of revenge 

 the object of a lifetime. The genesis of morality may be 

 said to consist in the development and interaction of these 

 two principles. 



In the stage of pure instinct, the influence of the ele- 

 mentary relationships appears chiefly in the sexual and 

 parental impulse. We cannot regard these as unselfish, 

 any more than we can regard the impulse to eat and drink 

 as selfish. Both terms imply a conception of ends, which 

 is alien to pure instinct. The conception of a primitive 

 egoism on which sociability is somehow overlaid is without 

 foundation either in biology or in psychology. Indeed, it 

 has been said with more truth of Nature 



" So careful of the type she seems, 

 So careless of the single life." 



For the impulses of sex and provision for young, if not 

 unselfish, at least do not tend to self-maintenance. In 

 some instances, as the act of procreation in the fly, and 

 courtship in the case of the male spider, they are danger- 

 ous, and even fatal, while if we allowed the solitary wasps 

 any sort of understanding of the purpose of their actions, 

 we should have to admire the self-devotion of their unre- 

 mitting toil to build and provision an abiding place for 

 the grub which they never see. We do not impute such 

 reflection, and we therefore reckon the actions mentioned 

 as neither selfish nor unselfish. What is clear is that in 

 following out these instincts the animal is acting as a part 

 of a whole, as a member of a species. He is stimulated by 

 his affinity to another individual, and his actions are of 

 service to individuals that come after him. It does not 

 seem that the " social principle," so to call it, makes any 

 marked advance in the first stage of intelligence. We have 

 seen that the attention shown to the young is of a rudi- 

 mentary character, and that social life is little more than a 

 manifestation of the gregarious instinct. It is indeed diffi- 



