96 
THE DATA OF ETHICS. 
There is such a prospect. We have already seen that 
evolution works towards perfect adaptation to the environment. 
Pleasures and pains are not fixed and absolute ; they are 
relative to structures and to the states of structures ; and as 
organisms adjust themselves physically to the conditions of 
their life, they must at the same time adjust themselves 
psychically. That is, every mode of action demanded by social 
conditions must eventually become pleasurable to social beings, 
and as parental love is already an instinct, so the broader love, 
not only of country, but of the race, will iu time become 
instinctive. Sympathy, hitherto stunted by adverse condi¬ 
tions, will develop ; and as human nature improves, the 
natural language of feeling will be less restrained; looks, 
words, tones will all grow more expressive, and the power of 
interpreting them will strengthen and sharpen by use. As 
the sphere of sympathetic gratification widens, the sphere of 
self-sacrifice will diminish ; for with growing efficiency and 
increasing welfare there will be fewer troubles to assuage, 
fewer pangs to partake. No one will be willing to accept 
benefits at the cost of pain or privation to others. It would 
be curious to speculate on what might happen if the balance 
began to descend on the altruistic side, and love for one’s 
neighbour grew actually more potent than love for one’s self. 
Then the moral dangers and hence the moral judgments of 
mankind would be reversed. The egoist would then possess 
a rare but desirable virtue, and so be counted a saint; self- 
seeking and self-assertion might be reckoned as attributes of 
holiness, and even the thief might be looked upon leniently, as 
endowed with an overplus of the unusual quality of acquisitive¬ 
ness. The heaviest censure would be reserved for vicious 
excesses of generosity, humility, long-suffering, renunciation, 
charity. 
But leaving this quaint possibility, there is certainly some¬ 
thing inspiring in the contemplation of a future merging of 
generosity in equity; of a perfectly pleasurable altruism ; of 
a state in which all actions should be “ absolutely right.” 
To-day, most actions are only relatively right; that is, are 
partially wrong ; for most are attended with some degree of 
pain, either to self or to neighbours. An absolutely right 
action is one which produces pure, unadulterated pleasure ; 
but this can happen only when evolution has perfectly 
adjusted desires to conditions. And at present, such perfect 
adjustments are possible only or chiefly in the lower part of 
our nature, which has been moulded to its environment before 
social evolution began. A healthy mother suckling her in¬ 
fant, a father playing with his boy, are not performing duties 
