84 The Morality of Nature 



In the midst of this vagueness, however, certain facts 

 arise and stand unavoidable before us. It becomes clear 

 that conduct which is not necessarily compensated in a single 

 life of any one generation, may have consequences in the 

 lives of his progeny. And in extension of the conception 

 it becomes clear that the death which awaits an individual 

 may be very different from that extreme penalty for con- 

 tinued unfitness which involves extermination of the line and 

 its root and branches. The penalty of individual death, 

 when it is a penalty, is after all a light one in comparison 

 with the penalty of tribal or racial extermination, as we see 

 proven in the primitive forms where life and death are so 

 prodigally dispensed. There a group composed of a family 

 of three or four generations involved in the same conduct 

 responsibility, may number thousands, nay hundreds of 

 thousands of individuals, each with his little separate re- 

 sponsibility as well as his share in the unit of cooperation. 

 Suppose, that a lake almost depopulated by accident, by 

 diversion of a water course, or by drought, is soon after- 

 wards again made habitable ; and thus affords an exceptional 

 opportunity for the few surviving and enormously prolific 

 fish to increase. A few individuals will produce thousands 

 of offspring and these will next season produce thousands of 

 thousands — all of one great family in almost identical joint 

 interest. Now of what relative gravity to this family unit 

 is the loss of one individual little fish, or of a score, or even 

 of a hundred. Doubtless it is a real loss of some extent; 

 and to that extent it is possibly a penalty; but only a pro- 

 portionate penalty? And if, on the other hand, the loss is of 

 the abnormal ones, and if the survivors — those more worthy, 



