Moral Motive 191 



is to be believed that the goal of human progress is the 

 continued intellectual preferment, of harmonious associated 

 action, over antagonistic rivalry, or in other words the 

 purposed supplanting, as a standard of fitness, of the de- 

 structive activity exercised selfishly, by the constructive 

 action exercised altruistically. The survival of the fittest 

 proceeds undisturbed, but the conditions change as numbers 

 increase, and what was right becomes wrong, and fitness 

 takes new forms. The chief factor is no longer physical 

 force, but the organizing impulse. 



The goal thus presented is not a finality ; it is a continuing 

 advance, oscillating perhaps in the never ended ebbing and 

 flowing of the tides of evolution. It is continued advance- 

 ment which is in sight, and not the end. For so far as we 

 can see, the goal is to be always a new height, which, once 

 attained, will enlarge the powers of vision to distances before 

 unknown. To express the thought without symbol or simile ; 

 it is a self-evident fact that the increase of human wisdom to 

 which we now aspire, and which we can now formulate and 

 reach out for, and attain, will when attained, increase again 

 the aspirations and the power to achieve. 



This growing activity which looks to the future for 

 reward instead of to the present, learns always more how to 

 see into the future. Just as the life we achieve by our present 

 feebly executed altruism, is higher and richer, and more 

 successful than that formerly attained without it, and as the 

 new knowledge is an inspiration toward continued effort; 

 so the future will always promise, and the promise will 

 always inspire. 



The evolution of conduct is as naturally and positively 



