THE ALLEGED GROWTH OF ALTRUISM IN THE 
CIVILIZED PERIOD 
By MELANCHTHON F. Lippy 
In the current number of a scientific journal occur the following 
sentences: 
Altruism arose chiefly as a kind of enlarged egoism. At first man must have 
been chiefly, if not wholly, individualistic, but very soon a time came when indi- 
vidualistic selfishness no longer served its egoistic ends, and self-preservation required 
the extension of each self to embrace all members of the tribe. Self-interest thus 
became absorbed in tribal interest, not at first because of any moral ideas about the 
rights of others, but solely because in this way each one’s self-interests were better 
served. 
This is one of a number of passages I have been marking for several 
years in which writers speak of altruism as something which has arisen 
or developed, or expanded, and usually at the expense of egoism or indi- 
vidualism or selfish interests. 
No one of course thinks of speaking of the facts of physical nature 
in terms analogous to these. Occasionally we hear that selection (mean- 
ing the biological law, or principle, or statement concerning uniformity 
in phenomena) can accomplish certain results. But this is so obviously 
a piece of loose writing that it does little harm. It is not a real hypo- 
statization of the abstract into a spook reality, any more than if a school- 
boy should say a weight falls because of ‘““Newton’s law.” Still even 
these phrases are opposed to clear reasoning. Now, of course, since the 
Middle Ages, we do not think of taking abstract nouns for reals except in 
the sense in which everything with content has some degree of reality. 
If one makes no claim to scientific exactness and is interested rather 
in mental therapeutics of any sort it may be pardonable for him to speak 
of the influence of the mind on the body, of the eternal nature of law 
and virtue, of the beneficent activities of gravitation, etc., but such 
words add confusion to counsel in a scientific notation. When shall 
we see a real descriptive ethics kept clear of all normative phraseology ? 
Is it not time that each writer should be frankly, consistently, and con- 
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