Altruism a Conscious Ideal 171 



fitness. All may live by right doing, or die in error, but to 

 man alone is granted the warning knowledge in advance 

 that his conduct determines his fate. In this knowledge lies 

 the incentive to a study of morality. It reveals early in the 

 study the fact that it is only the beginning of wisdom. The 

 perception that there is a law of conduct and the knowledge 

 that it governs, is still immensely removed from the knowl- 

 edge of what it is. That is the superlative wisdom which 

 may well be the ultimate prize. But with the first dawn of 

 the moral sense as an aspiring ideal, comes an appreciation 

 of right conduct ; and especially of that which is not based 

 on self-interest, and most especially of that which involves 

 self-sacrifice. So that altruism is closely linked with all 

 moral perception. The appreciation of sacrifice at once 

 promotes such conduct, first by commendation of fellows, an 

 award of which is instinctively welcomed; and secondly by 

 material help and maintenance, against consequences which 

 the self-sacrifice might have incurred, but which associates 

 will ward ofif, because of their instinctive gratitude, as well 

 as because of an intellectual desire for the cultivation of the 

 principle, as a most valuable factor in associated conduct. 



