30 The Morality of Nature 



sense of responsibility for one's own success or failure, 

 which still prevails, prompts a desire to conciliate or defer or 

 modify the action. Some of its benefits may be given up in 

 order to attain a portion. Or action in concert may be 

 taken so that if several are concerned each does part and 

 all are gratified. And so arises a sense of duty to others to 

 the extent of recognizing the others force; and perceiving 

 the value of mutual support. This evidently is not in the 

 beginning a result of human moral impulse or of a high 

 intelligence, for even where the organism is of so low a type 

 that anything like declared agreement is impossible, yet 

 obviously disagreement which impedes the business in view 

 is so injurious that both may suffer. Then in comparative 

 or competitive life the peaceable would benefit more and live 

 longer than the needlessly disputatious, and so among the 

 most unintelligent creatures there would develop a more 

 harmonious life by the operation of the law of survival, 

 without any conscious sense of harmony or of duty. 

 Again self-interest appears as the motive. The beginning 

 of duty is in self-interest. Fundamentally the con- 

 duct is good or bad for no other reason than that 

 it benefits the individual. Still this benefit is what consti- 

 tutes its goodness, and when the individual becomes asso- 

 ciated with others, even in the intimate relations of human 

 social organization and family ; the principle does not change, 

 for although several may participate in joint action as an 

 enlarged self and in that part have joint responsibility, yet 

 each also remains, in regard to other parts of the conduct, 

 in opposed attitude toward the others, separated from them 

 with his special share of consequences in which they may not 



