40 The Morality of Nature 



ciated life of others, which is a necessary accompaniment 

 or condition to their development. The fundamentally 

 selfial principle of the conduct survives; it is never super- 

 seded and can never be evaded and never ignored; but the 

 self principle is overlaid by other requirements, which, be- 

 cause of their radical difference of origin maybe to be 

 styled opposing principles. The question of right and wrong 

 conduct for creatures living in company include, as has been 

 seen, not only those of wise or unwise attitude toward the 

 outer world, considered as a hostile environment, but others 

 having in view good or bad relations with the associated 

 company, which may lead to a better achievement in the 

 advantages of joint action instead of opposed action. 

 Courses are changed for these reasons from directly self- 

 ish motives to selfial ones indirectly selfish and partly co- 

 operative. They are still adopted, however, as a means to 

 an end; and that end is self-satisfaction; now desired for 

 a community, but still the same one sough., m the primary 

 impulse of the individual who had regard solely to his own 

 benefit. His activities are however now linked with those 

 of others, in such a way as to obscure the issue, and in this 

 obscurity it may become difficult to believe that the old 

 principle continues in force. It seems at times, in human 

 consideration, that self-preservation is sin, and self-sacrifice 

 is virtue, and that right and wrong divide on these lines. 

 The issue is thus confused in the multiplication of impulses. 

 The beginning of the new element can always be seen, be- 

 cause it is perpetually renewed. The earliest stages of con- 

 duct can be seen in operation today as at the dawn of 

 ethical law. The forms in which will is newly achieved; and 



