Altruism Fundamental 151 



tures compelled by it to contend for the superiority which 

 is not possible for both. At its inception the aggression of 

 one life which destroys the other, is compared with the 

 tolerance of two others in which both survive in harmony. 

 The two systems of conduct thus contrasted differ in their 

 unit of activity, but each seeks self-preservation and both are 

 self serving fundamentally. But the thing we are seeking, 

 the principle of altruistic association, is evidently already 

 beginning in the life which fills an environment to crowding 

 before any contest is necessary. It would appear that the 

 altruistic motive is a natural and original enlargement of 

 the unit of the selfish fundamental motive, and that the 

 aggressive impulse is the secondary or subsequent motive. 

 The simple tolerant phase of altruistic conduct is the collec- 

 tive activity normal to living creatures of any fixed type, 

 and of equal and similar development, in an environment of 

 abundance; and the aggressively selfish motive is only later 

 imposed by circumstances generating differences and enforc- 

 ing rivalry, and is not adopted until those circumstances 

 arise, and then is assumed only provisionally with a sus- 

 tained tendency to return to altruistic methods whenever 

 liberal environment makes it possible, and to limit and reduce 

 the competition always to the degree unavoidable. Life thus 

 seems to begin in ideal innocence and to end in ideal perfec- 

 tion. It is consistent with the known facts relating to the 

 upward tendency of evolution, as well as with the conception 

 of a compensating justice, proceeding to establish final right- 

 ness, by the law of conduct. It is not repugnant to humanity 

 to trace back to such a source a principle by which wrong or 

 evil appear to be simply the negation, or absence, or defi- 



