Altruism Fundamental i55 



climate and generous environment. They grow together, 

 being the similar offspring of a common stock, without 

 need or thought of aggression. 



It seems that the fundamental altruism thus first becomes 

 visibly effective, as a transfer of advantages from the parent 

 to the offspring, and a joint support in those advantages by 

 the co-related offspring. In parenthood and brotherhood 

 there is thus evolved the principle which underlies all the 

 later complexities of such relationships, modified by the 

 struggle for survival, which arises when environment be- 

 comes hostile, or overcrowding leads to competition for 

 benefits not sufficient for all. 



In all the development of higher organizations which 

 advanced animal life presents, so long as it continues itself 

 by parentage and birth, and at all times and circumstances, 

 so long as individual death remains as the method of relief 

 from worn-out organs, there persists and survives this fund- 

 amental interdependence as a primary requisite for survival ; 

 a stream which disappears at times from view but still per- 

 sists beneath the surface. As altruism it reappears so source- 

 like, and in springs of such purity, and in such abrupt 

 contrast with surroundings, that it is a pardonable mistake 

 to believe it a new inspiration. 



When circumstances have imposed upon a species the 

 extreme of offensive and destructive impulse, as, for ex- 

 ample, in the solitary armed carnivorous beasts, there still 

 persists in motherhood the purest devotion and self-sacrifice. 

 And again, when in retrogression, or vicious perversion, of 

 humanity, a higher life is depraved into a disregard in all 

 other relations, there is a surviving instinct often apparent 



