220 “ THE PRINCIPLES OF ETHICS.” 
of the appliances for maintaining life is deficient, and early loss of 
life is apt to occur.”* 
An excellent illustration is afforded by herbivorous animals in 
the power of discriminating between poisonous and non-poisonous 
plants. In man himself this power is often wanting to distinguish 
between the fatal Monkshood and the harmless Larkspur—or, I 
may add, the familiar garden plant, the pungent Horseradish. 
The dog uses discrimination “ when he recognises in idea the 
difference between a road that goes round the angle of a field and 
a short cut across the field, and takes the last.”. 
“ Legislators and people fail to discriminate between the effects 
of moral injunctions on those having natures with which they are 
congruous, and their effects on those having natures with which 
✓ 
they are incongruous. Some people think it needs only to teach 
children what is right and they will do what is right! Further, 
they expect that by education—or the mere acquisition of a 
knowledge which is not related to conduct—they will diminish 
crime.” 
This brings us—omitting many other interesting illustrations— 
to the two great divisions or kinds of Altruism:— Justice and 
Beneficence. The discrimination of the former is necessary for 
social equilibrium, and therefore of public concern; the latter only 
applies to private concern, as not being necessary for social 
equilibrium. The enforcement of Justice is a public function, the 
exercise of Beneficence is a private function. 
* I am glad to be able to give a further illustration from the President’s 
Address at the Nottingham meeting of the British Association, just over 
(September, 1893). Professor Burdon-Sanderson, F.B.S., said:_“The 
organ which, on structural grounds, we consider to represent that of hearing 
in animals low in the scale of organisation—as, e.g. , in the Ctenophora—has 
nothing to do with sound, but confers on its possessor the power of judging of 
the direction of its own movements in the water in which it swims, and of 
guiding those movements accordingly. In the lowest vertebrates, as, e.g., 
in the dogfish, although the auditory apparatus is much more complicated 
in structure, and plainly corresponds with our own, we still find the parti¬ 
cular part which is concerned in hearing scarcely traceable. All that is 
provided for is that sixth sense, which the higher animals also possess, and 
which enables them to judge of the direction of their own movements_ 
W. B. H. 
October, 1893. 
