FOOTNOTES:

It must be noticed, too, that, in comparing the negro with the white man in the United States, we have not compared a wholly savage people with a civilized one; for the negro has been, for several generations, in contact with civilization, and must have gained something from this contact. It is to be greatly doubted whether the infants of those Siberians of whose pleasure in the suffering of other beings an instance was given above would, even under the best of influences, develop into individuals of much real benevolence. The average child of civilized society is somewhat callous to the sufferings of animals, partly because he does not realize the reality of those sufferings; yet I have seen lost kittens tenderly cared for by ragged little street urchins; and I have more than once heard small boys, playing in the gutter, exclaim at the beating of a donkey or a horse. The child repeats, perhaps, to some extent, the history of his race's origin in savagery. Yet it is to be seriously doubted whether the children of the savages described as delighting in cutting their meat from living animals would attain, even under the most careful training, the average spontaneous humanity of the lad of civilized progenitors, or would ever become truly humane men and women. It is conceivable that superior mental and moral capacity may remain comparativelyundeveloped, proper environment lacking, but we begin to see the fallacy of concluding, from such cases, the non-hereditary character of capacity when we suppose such cases as those above, of the rearing of savage infants under civilization. It must be added of the very isolated cases—of which much is often made—in which the children of civilized parents have been stolen by savages, at an early age, (1) that it is not, and cannot be, maintained that all the descendants of civilized progenitors are endowed with superior mental and moral tendency; and (2) that such instances are too few in number to furnish, alone, the basis of any theory. The evidence furnished us by the general results of neglect in the midst of civilization is more to the point; but, even in these cases, it must be shown that the children came of good parentage in order that the evidence may be admitted as telling against the theory of heredity. Every breeder of animals counts with the greatest confidence upon the action of the laws of heredity; and no reason can be given why these laws should not work in the case of man, why he should be the one species exempt from them. It is impossible to cross the dog with the wolf without perceiving the result of the crossing, in the mental as well as the physical characteristics of the offspring; and the dog does not differ more from the wolf than does civilized man, in the most advanced nations, from the savage. Even his physical characteristics, the contour of the head and face especially, the form of the features as well as the expression, are different and imply a higher type.

And, in discussing lower types in the midst of civilization, we cannot do better than give some consideration to Dugdale's remarkable book on the Jukes, which has already been mentioned. In this book is traced the history of five hundred and forty persons belonging to seven generations of descendants of five sisters, there being much intermarrying among them. Out of two hundred and fifty-two Juke women, whose history is traced, thirty-three were illegitimate, eighteen were mothers of bastards before marriage, twelve the mothers of bastards after marriage, fifty-three were prostitutes (the cases of eight being unascertained), thirteen were barren, eleven kept brothels, thirty-seven had syphilis, forty-five received, at some time, outdoor relief, the total number of years amounting to two hundred and forty-two, twenty-four received almshouse relief, the time reaching a total of thirty-fiveyears, and sixteen were committed for crimes for a total of one and three-fourths years, the number of offences being twenty-four. Out of two hundred and twenty-five Juke men, forty-nine were illegitimate, twenty were prostitutes, one kept a brothel, fourteen were afflicted with syphilis, fifty received outdoor relief, the time being, in total, two hundred and seventy years, twenty-nine were in the almshouse for a total of forty-six years, and thirty-three were committed for crime for a total of eighty-nine and a half years, the number of offences being fifty-nine. The lines with which the Jukes cohabited or intermarried were naturally of a low moral type, but they do not show nearly as high a percentage of crime and pauperism; thus among the marriageable women of the Jukes, we find the percentage of harlotry to be 52.40, among those of the intermarrying or cohabiting lines only 41.76. Of the stock of Ada Juke, known to the police as "Margaret, the mother of criminals," nine offenders were sent to prison for a total of sixty years, their crimes constituting fifty-four per cent of all the crimes against property recorded of the Jukes, and including burglary, grand larceny, and highway robbery; besides one murder and three attempts at rape. Dugdale thus describes his first acquaintance with the "Jukes." "In July, 1874, the New York Prison Association having deputed me to visit thirteen of the county jails of this state and report thereupon, I made a tour of inspection in pursuance of that appointment. No specially striking cases of criminal careers, traceable through several generations, presented themselves till —— County was reached. Here, however, were found six persons, under four family names, who turned out to be blood relations in some degree. The oldest, a man of forty-five, was waiting trial for receiving stolen goods; his daughter, aged eighteen, held as witness against him; her uncle, aged forty-two, burglary in the first degree; the illegitimate daughter of the latter's wife, aged twelve years, upon which child the latter had attempted rape, to be sent to the reformatory for vagrancy; and two brothers in another branch of the family, aged respectively nineteen and fourteen, accused of an assault with intent to kill, they having maliciously pushed a child over a high cliff and nearly killed him. Upon trial, the oldest was acquitted, though the goods stolen were found in his house, his previous good character saving him; the guilt belonged to his brother-in-law, the man aged forty-two above-mentioned, who wasliving in the house. This brother-in-law is an illegitimate child, an habitual criminal, and the son of an unpunished and cautious thief. He had two brothers and one sister, all of whom are thieves, the sister being the contriver of crime, they its executors. The daughter of this woman, the girl aged eighteen above-mentioned, testified, at the trial which resulted in convicting her uncle and procuring his sentence for twenty years to state prison, that she was forced to join him in his last foray, that he had loaded her with the booty and beat her on the journey home, over two miles, because she lagged under the load. When this girl was released, her family in jail, and thus left without a home, she was forced to make her lodging in a brothel on the outskirts of the city. Next morning she applied to the judge to be recommitted to prison 'for protection' against certain specified carnal outrages required of her and submitted to. She has since been sent to the house of refuge. Of the two boys, one was discharged by the grand jury; the other was tried and received five years' imprisonment in Sing Sing.

"These six persons belonged to a long lineage, reaching back to the early colonists, and had intermarried so slightly with the emigrant population of the Old World that they may be called a strictly American family. They had lived in the same locality for generations, and were so despised by the respectable community that their family namehad come to be used generically as a term of reproach.

"That this was deserved became manifest on slight inquiry. It was found that out of twenty-nine males, in ages ranging from fifteen to seventy-five, the immediate blood-relations of these six persons, seventeen of them were criminals, or fifty-eight per cent; while fifteen were convicted of some degree of offence, and received seventy-one years of sentence.... The crimes and misdemeanors they committed were assault and battery, assault with intent to kill, murder, attempt at rape, petit larceny, grand larceny, burglary, forgery, cruelty to animals."

But this book of Dugdale's, which traces so clearly and thoroughly long lines of criminal descent, makes manifest, also, the influence of environment. We find, for instance, in the line of the illegitimate posterity of Ada Juke, generation five, the case of a male descendant, who was sentenced to Sing Sing for three years at the age of twenty-two, but who, leaving prison at the expiration of his sentence,abandoned crime and settled down to steady employment. A second case is that of another male descendant of Ada, who assisted his brother in burglary at the age of twelve, and served probably some thirteen or fourteen years in prison, but later reformed and took to stone-quarrying, having learned, says Dugdale, industrious habits in prison. A brother of this man, who had also served sentences in jail for assault and battery, and a term of two years at Sing Sing for burglary (the term beginning at the age of twenty-two), moved at the age of thirty-one into the same county as his brother, and went into the business of quarrying. A female descendant in the illegitimate line of Ada, generation five, who seems to have followed a dissolute life up to the age of fifteen, at this point married a German, a "steady, industrious, plodding man," and settled down into a reputable woman. In the legitimate line of Ada, again, generation five, we find the case of a girl "said to have been born in the poorhouse," who "was adopted out from there into a wealthy family, and is doing well." In all these cases, the reform was the result of contact, during the earlier period of life, with new elements inducing industry and sobriety. Such cases might lead us to doubt the conclusions we should otherwise feel justified in drawing with regard to the action of heredity, and must certainly render us cautious not to impute the whole character of the individual to heredity alone. But the complicated nature ofallsocial relations should restrain us from laying all stress upon any one element in those relations, in any case. Here, again, we recur to the conception of conditions and results in distinction from that of cause and effect. If statistics such as these of the Jukes included minute and careful statements as to mental and physical characteristics and resemblances, they would undeniably be much more reliable basis for conclusions as to the hereditary nature of character. Nevertheless, incomplete though this evidence be, it is by no means such that it can be logically disregarded. It is to be said of such cases of reform and respectability as those noticed under favorable influences (1) that we are not informed as to its exact extent and motive and have no means of knowing what these were; (2) that, if reversion to ancestral types is possible in the sense of deterioration, there is no reason why it should not be possible in the opposite sense also,—no reason why better characters should not, through, perhaps, some favorable prenatal influence at exactly the right period of development,occasionally crop out in a line of general baseness;[158]and (3) that the admixture of a strain of somewhat better blood may produce, or some especial crossing be favorable to, the development of higher character in a part, though not necessarily all, of the offspring. "When the domestic pig and the wild boar or the wolf and the dog are crossed," says Ribot,[159]"some of the progeny inherit the savage, and others the domestic instincts. Similar facts have been observed by Girou in the crossing of different races of dogs and cats." We know quite well that the same law governs the transmission of character in human beings. In a family of children, some will inherit the characteristics of the father, some those of the mother. Mr. Jenkins of the Bureau of Police of Brooklyn, N.Y., related to me a case that had come under his notice. Of a family consisting of father, mother, two sons, and a daughter, the mother was a hard-working, honest washerwoman, while the father was depraved in his tendencies; and of the three children the daughter resembled the mother in character, the sons, on the other hand, their father. One of the sons was sentenced to prison for a bad case of burglary, and was shot while attempting to escape; and on the same day on which his picture was removed from the rogues' gallery, his brother's was hung in its place, the latter having, with calm deliberation and preparation, murdered a girl with whom he had some relation. A similar case is recorded by Gall, where the mother represented the good, the father the evil stock, and of five children three were condemned to severe penalties for thieving, the other two lived correct lives. It is to be noticed that, of the three cases of better character among the Jukes cited above, the two reformed characters were brothers. It is by no means proved by these cases that all or a majority of the Jukes were capable, even under the best of influences, of a like betterment of character. On the contrary: the general characteristics of extreme licentiousness attaching to the whole family, on which Dugdale lays special stress,—a licentiousness extending even to cohabitation and marriage with the negroes at a time when the latter were yet in slavery and regarded as little more than animals,—as well as the exceeding viciousness and inhumanity exhibited in some of the crimes (witness the attempted rape on the niece of twelve and the pushing of the child over the cliff), show a tendencyof character much below the average. Nor was the prison discipline which accomplished the reform of the two brothers the only opportunity of steady industry, or the prison the only reformatory environment afforded. Dugdale mentions an "extensive employer of labor, located near the original settlement of the Jukes," who "employs several members of it," treating them "with firmness and unvaryingly scrupulous fairness," interposing his authority and checking them in incipient crime. He acts as their banker and, as school trustee, arranges, "where widows depend upon their boys for support, that they shall work for him and go to school alternate weeks." If, indeed, the family is located, as it seems to be, in the rather sparsely settled districts of northern New York, it is scarcely likely to suffer great isolation, as it might in the midst of a city, or to be excluded from means of honest livelihood. Dugdale mentions, indeed, that this employer "has not taken up this work as a 'mission,' but strictly as a business man, who, finding himself placed where he must employ the rude laborers of his locality, deals with them on the sound and healthy basis of commercial contract, honestly carried out and rigidly enforced." Unfortunately, Dugdale does not furnish us with any exact information as to the result of this very humane course of treatment. We can only revert to his remark that, though the Jukes had lived in this neighborhood for generations where work was evidently not lacking nor kind and judicious treatment absent, their name was used generically, by the reputable community, as a term of reproach.

We have already noticed some inconsistencies in Stephen's theory of human progress as merely that of an accumulation of knowledge. But he practically contradicts, elsewhere in his work, this view of advancement. On page 201 of the "Science of Ethics," he says distinctly: "As men become more intellectual, sympathetic, and so forth, they gain fresh sensibilities, which are not simple judgments of consequences hitherto improved, but as direct, imperative, and substantial as any of the primitive sensibilities." Even if this statement were meant to apply to the individual alone, a great difficulty must lie in the way of any theory that sensibilities so inherent, sensibilities "as direct, imperative, and substantial as any of the primitive sensibilities," will not affect the character of descendants through inheritance, in the same manner as these primitive sensibilities are acknowledged to affect it. But elsewhere Stephen remarks: "An instinct growsand decays not on account of its effects on the individual, but on account of its effects upon the race. The animal which, on the whole, is better adapted for continuing its species, will have an advantage in the struggle, even though it may not be so well adapted for pursuing its own happiness." He is careful to use the word "happiness" here, but the division under which the sentence appears is headed, "Social and Individual Utility," and he distinctly states, on the preceding page, that the social instincts may be a disadvantage to the individual in the struggle for existence. He writes, in this connection: "The process by which the correlation of pernicious and painful states is worked out is one which, by its very nature, must take a number of generations. Races survive in virtue of the completeness of this correlation."[160]This is Darwinism applied to humanity; and, surely, since the human race has existed in the social state for very many generations, we must suppose, according to the theory thus stated, continuous organic advance, even if we did not consider the passage in connection with the assertion of the gain, with increasing intelligence and sympathy, of sensibilities as direct, imperative, and substantial as any primitive ones. Again Mr. Stephen writes: "It is true, generally, that each man has certain capacities for moral as for every other kind of development, and capacities which vary from the top to the bottom of the scale. No process of education or disciplinewhateverwould convert a Judas Iscariot into a Paul or John."[161]Then education, the environment of civilization, is not the only factor in the production of character. Nor is it, according to Mr. Stephen's own words, the only important factor. If capacities vary from the top to the bottom of the scale, then surely this variation cannot be an unimportant element of development. As a matter of fact, Mr. Stephen himself lays especial stress upon inherited characteristic as the basis of character. He says, for example: "The character is determined for each individual by its original constitution, though the character is modified as the reason acts.... But, after all, we start with a certain balance of feeling, with certain fixed relations between our various instincts; and, however these may change afterwards, our character is so far determined from the start. Again, it is plain that this varies greatly with different peoples and gives rise to different types."[162]Surely the formation of types at least cannot be a matter of theindividual alone. Furthermore, Mr. Stephen distinctly asserts a growth of intelligence in the savage—which we cannot suppose to stop short with the beginning of civilization—while he especially emphasizes the fact that the emotions develop concomitantly with the intellect. He says also: "We assume an organic change to occur—no matter how—in certain individuals of a species, and that change to be inherited by their descendants; and thus two competing varieties to arise, one of which may be supplanted by the other, or each of which may supplant the other in a certain part of the common domain. Some such process is clearly occurring in the case of human variations. Everywhere we see a competition between different races, and the more savage vanishing under the approach of the more civilized. Certain races seem to possess enormous expansive powers, whilst others remain limited within fixed regions or are slowly passing out of existence. So far as human development supposes an organic change in the individual [?], we may suppose that this process is actually going on and that, for example, the white man may be slowly pushing savage races out of existence. I do not ask whether this is the fact, because for my purpose it is irrelevant. We are considering the changes which take place without such organic development, not as denying the existence of organic developments, but simply because they are so slow and their influence so gradual that they do not come within our sphere. They belong, as astronomers say, to the secular, not to the periodic changes. Confining ourselves, therefore, to the changes which are, in my phrase, products of the 'social factor,' and which assume the constancy of the individual organism,"[163]etc. The passage is of importance as acknowledging the reality of organic progress; but it is full of the self-contradictions which we have already noticed. It starts with the Darwinian assumption that organic change occurring inindividualsis directly inheritable by their descendants; this assumption, having done its office, however, is discarded, and we are told that any organic change cannot be that of individuals but must be that of societies, or at least that it must be of such sort that we have not only no need to consider it with regard to the individual life, but even no need to consider it in the study of the whole development of a society under civilization, or rather that we have no need to study it at all as soon as we have the"social medium" to fall back upon for an explanation of progress; and finally, in direct contradiction to the assumption first made, a constancy of the individual organism is asserted. This assertion is also in direct contradiction to the assertion before noticed that character is determined by original constitution and that original capacity differs "infinitely"[164]in different individuals. We are indebted to Mr. Stephen for a very minute analysis of the influence of even smallest details of circumstance upon character; surely, while we are thus emphasizing the delicacy of nervous organization that answers, with the sensibility of a gold-leaf electroscope, to the slightest variations in the environment, we cannot logically leave out of account the results of such variation in inheritance because these, too, are minute. And surely we cannot conceive that an organism so sensitive to the influence of environment is yet so inflexible and unalterable as far as the transmission of its changes to offspring is concerned. On any sound physiological theory, we cannot avoid supposing that all these minute changes in character which Stephen refers to the action of the social environment are accompanied by exact physiological equivalents. Then either these changes of organization are not inheritable,—in which case the organism does not propagate itself but something different from itself, and we have no alternative but to resort to some such theory as that of Weismann,—or else these changes are inheritable (subject, of course, to all the variations which individual circumstances of development must induce), in which case their inheritance must be of quite as much importance as their origin to any theory of social progress. As we have said, Weismann has gradually come to admitsomeinfluence of the environment on the germ-plasm. We can indeed conceive of the representation of all previous development of the species in the individual, and of the determination of the degree of importance assumed, in the organism, by any particular acquirement or tendency by the coincidence of circumstance, but we can scarcely conceive logically of a propagation of organization that does not represent all the influences which have made that organization what it is. Even from Stephen's standpoint, it is difficult to understand how the organization of society, which he admits to be no organization on the plane of the higher animal, but of a much lower type, can be of so much importance in the advance of mankind,its variations the condition of progress, and yet the much more interdependent organization of the animal body be supposed to remain constant and take no part in this progress. It is difficult to comprehend how so much stress can be laid on the mere external influence of the units of society on each other, and, at the same time, the far more intimate and direct influence of parents on their offspring can be deemed of so little importance as to warrant our disregarding it altogether. It is especially difficult to understand how it is that heredity can be disregarded, not merely in its influence on the individual or even on the generation, but in all its manifold, intricate, and prolonged workings since man first extended family life to tribal organization; and this, too, in spite of the acknowledgment that progress through heredity is real if slow. It is strange that there should always be a tendency to draw a distinct line between social man and all the rest of the animal kingdom, as if, when society began, all former laws ceased from operation. Thus it is sometimes said that natural selection no longer acts on the individual because it acts on societies as wholes also; as well say that it cannot act on inner organization because it acts on the organism as a whole. As a matter of fact, it affects society through individuals, and the individual through, or rather in, his organization. If it is true, as Stephen asserts, that change of social tissue is primary and fundamental to all external social change, it is not the less true that change of individual organization is fundamental to all change of external action. No theory of development which goes beyond the individual life and considers the progress of society as a whole can scientifically disregard the element of heredity in this progress.

FOOTNOTES:[141]I am indebted for these facts to Dr. Auguste Forel.[142]"Ants, Wasps, and Bees," Chap. V.[143]"Zur psychologischen Würdigung der darwin'schen Theorie."[144]Pp. 141, 142, translation by Henry M. Trollope.[145]Eng. ed. Internat. Scientific Ser., p. 276; quoted from "The Zoölogist."[146]"Mental Evolution in Animals," p. 345; cited from an article in "Nature," 1883.[147]"Animal Intelligence," p. 472.[148]"Mind," Vol. VIII.[149]Lubbock: "The Origin of Civilisation," pp. 9, 10.[150]"The Science of Ethics," pp. 103, 104.[151]Ibid. p. 109.[152]"The Science of Ethics," p. 419.[153]Ibid. p. 103.[154]Ribot: "Heredity." Here we have examples which show that disease, as well as healthful organization and function, are subject to variation; and it may occur to us to wonder that no one has thought of referring these variations to some supernatural interference or special inner spontaneity; that theories which assume some transcendental agency or some spontaneously acting vital principle as the cause of normal, healthful variation have yet either left the variations of disease out of consideration or else simply referred them to influence of the environment. The reason for this, as far as transcendental interference is concerned, is evident; any theory of teleology in such cases must point to malevolent not benevolent design.[155]"Heredity," pp. 124, 125. Quoted from the "Dictionnaire Philosophique," article "Caton."[156]"The Science of Ethics," pp. 102, 103.[157]"The Science of Ethics," p. 107.[158]See previous observations on this subject, p. 408.[159]"Heredity," Engl. trans., p. 84.[160]"The Science of Ethics," pp. 91, 92.[161]Ibid., p. 432. The italics are mine.[162]Ibid., pp. 72, 73.[163]P. 121.[164]See above, p. 400.

[141]I am indebted for these facts to Dr. Auguste Forel.

[142]"Ants, Wasps, and Bees," Chap. V.

[143]"Zur psychologischen Würdigung der darwin'schen Theorie."

[144]Pp. 141, 142, translation by Henry M. Trollope.

[145]Eng. ed. Internat. Scientific Ser., p. 276; quoted from "The Zoölogist."

[146]"Mental Evolution in Animals," p. 345; cited from an article in "Nature," 1883.

[147]"Animal Intelligence," p. 472.

[148]"Mind," Vol. VIII.

[149]Lubbock: "The Origin of Civilisation," pp. 9, 10.

[150]"The Science of Ethics," pp. 103, 104.

[151]Ibid. p. 109.

[152]"The Science of Ethics," p. 419.

[153]Ibid. p. 103.

[154]Ribot: "Heredity." Here we have examples which show that disease, as well as healthful organization and function, are subject to variation; and it may occur to us to wonder that no one has thought of referring these variations to some supernatural interference or special inner spontaneity; that theories which assume some transcendental agency or some spontaneously acting vital principle as the cause of normal, healthful variation have yet either left the variations of disease out of consideration or else simply referred them to influence of the environment. The reason for this, as far as transcendental interference is concerned, is evident; any theory of teleology in such cases must point to malevolent not benevolent design.

[155]"Heredity," pp. 124, 125. Quoted from the "Dictionnaire Philosophique," article "Caton."

[156]"The Science of Ethics," pp. 102, 103.

[157]"The Science of Ethics," p. 107.

[158]See previous observations on this subject, p. 408.

[159]"Heredity," Engl. trans., p. 84.

[160]"The Science of Ethics," pp. 91, 92.

[161]Ibid., p. 432. The italics are mine.

[162]Ibid., pp. 72, 73.

[163]P. 121.

[164]See above, p. 400.

The exact circumstances which led, in any particular line of descent, to the final production of self-conscious altruism we cannot know. We may, perhaps, as has been hinted, trace the whole development to the original union of the sexes in lower, asexual species, and of mother and offspring; and we may suppose the final self-conscious altruism to have been led up to gradually by habit, in any case, the history of all function being gradual evolution. Thus we may suppose it possible that, in some cases, the care of offspring may have been preceded by a habit of care, on the part of the female animal, for her eggs, which, as habit, was pleasurable, but was connected with no consciousness of the offspring produced from the eggs until some new circumstance of environment brought them within ken. Of the development of habit in general and of pleasure in it, we have plenty of illustrations in our own individual experience, and we can even watch, in our own case, the process of the increase of altruism along old lines as well as its growth in new directions; and we may thus gain a conception of what must have been the general nature of its earliest development, in any case.

In Volume III of "Mind," Paul Friedmann has an interesting essay on "The Genesis of Disinterested Benevolence," in which he relates the following: "A man had to throw away some water and, stepping out of his house, threw it upon a heap of rubbish, where some faded plants were nearly dying. At that moment, he paid no attention to them, took no interest in their pitiable state. The next day, having again some water to throw away, the man stepped out at the same place, when he remarked that the plants had raised their stems and regained some life. He understood that this was the result of his act of the day before, his interest was awakened, and as he held a jar with water in his hand, heagain threw its contents over the plants. On the following day the same took place; the benevolent feeling, the interest in the recovery and welfare of the plants augmented, and the man tended the plants with increasing care. When he found, one day, that the rubbish and plants had been carted away, he felt a real annoyance. The feeling of the man was in this case real disinterested benevolence. The plants were neither fine nor useful, and the place where they stood was ugly and out of the way, so that the man had no advantage from their growth. Nor had the man a general wish to rear plants, for there were a number of other plants sorely in want of care, but to which the man did not transfer his affections. He had loved these individual plants." Friedmann says further: "Formerly rather hostile to dogs, now that I have a dog myself, I feel well inclined towards the whole canine species, but most to that part of it which has some characteristic feature in common with my favorite." Features of the first quotation may remind us of some former considerations of ours in which attention and interest were found to run parallel. We may take exception, however, to Friedmann's definition of the extension of benevolent feeling from an individual of a class to the whole of the class or to beings resembling them in any way as "a sort of logical confusion." This view has already been criticised. The adult being at least does not confuse individuals, or even if he may occasionally do so, such confusion is not at all the distinguishing feature of progress in altruism; it is merely an accident, not anything that is characteristic. The recognition of old features in new objects is the opposite of confusion; it would rather indicate a logical confusion, a lack of intelligence, if we failed to remember that which has formerly given us pleasure, and to find, in similar objects, some renewal of that pleasure. It would have been just as logical, for instance, and more truly benevolent, if the man who tended the plants had cared also for the other plants mentioned as "sorely in want of care," and which he seems to have left to perish.

We may often notice the growth of altruistic from egoistic as well as of egoistic from altruistic motives, in ourselves; for retrogression as well as progression in altruism is possible with the individual. If we feel bitterly towards some human being, for instance, the best and surest remedy is to perform some act of kindness towards him. We may contemplate and carry out thedeed with merely a sense of gratification and egoistic elation at our own generosity, but we are more than likely to experience some degree of change of feeling before we have finished. On the other hand, our heart often seems to harden and fill with greater animosity towards those we have injured, the longer we continue this course of injurious action and the more positive the injury inflicted. A certain degree of generosity must, it is true, already exist in order that we may be able to show kindness to an enemy, just as hostility must also be present in order that we may be able to commence a course of injury or unkindness; but both kindly feeling and animosity increase constantly with their exercise. We are never exactly the same after our deeds that we are before them.

Says George Eliot: "It would be a poor result of all our anguish and our wrestling if we won nothing but our old selves at the end of it—if we could return to the same blind loves, the same self-confident blame, the same light thoughts of human suffering, the same frivolous gossip over blighted human lives."[165]And again: "The creature we help to save, though only a half-reared linnet, bruised and lost by the wayside—how we watch and fence it, and dote on its signs of recovery."[166]

Whatever the particular circumstances that led, in the particular line of animal descent by which the species we distinctively term human finally came into existence, to the extension of temporary to life-long association, and whether this life-long association began only with man, or earlier with his ape-like progenitors, certain it is that increase of numbers must finally condition society. The internal, like the external process, is a gradual one, an evolution; and we cannot, therefore, suppose society as life-long association to have begun with the existence of no altruistic feeling whatever. In so far, Darwin's assertion that the social instinct led men to society contains a measure of truth; but it is to be remembered that the social instinct at the beginning of social life cannot have been the same with the social instinct of present civilization, which is the product of long development; pleasure in function, its ends, and objects, increasesconcomitantly withexercise. Darwin's statement is, hence, liable to misconstruction. There is a similar truth in Rolph's criticism of Spencer's theory that men adopted social life because they found it advantageous,on the ground that men must first have had experience of the advantages of association before they could have been aware of them. But the experience which continually leads to a step in advance may not be, at every point, for every step, the experience of the individual or individuals taking the step; it is quite possible that some steps may be taken from the observance of the experience of others; at least this is possible if we suppose any degree of intelligence and reason in the individuals taking the step. The introduction of the idea of a calculation of advantages is, furthermore, exceedingly useful. For, while the "social instinct," the desire for and pleasure in all the various function connected with association with other beings, may be of assistance in bringing about any advance in association, the selfish instinct, already in existence before the evolution of any considerable degree of altruistic impulse, may influence and induce the advance, where the social instinct is not, alone, of sufficient strength. At the beginning of social life, as at every later point of advancement, motives are mixed, and selfishness may prepare the way for unselfishness.

At any point of evolution, there must be, among contending species or individuals, some who are stronger or who have, through some circumstance, the advantage over the others; given even a moderate number of individuals, and it is hardly possible that all should be defeated and destroyed in any struggle, like the famous cats of Kilkenny. This being the case, and change of organization being continually conditioned by contact with new elements of environment, advancement, evolution, becomes a necessity, no natural catastrophe occurring to destroy all life. There is no mystery about evolution in this sense. Advancement in society is still more comprehensible to us by the fact of the element of reason involved in it; from the beginning of life-association among human beings or their immediate progenitors, the existence of some more intelligent individuals than the rest, who will perceive the advantages of association, may be assumed. And thus at each step, as the growing density of population continually renders increasing coöperation increasingly advantageous, we may suppose the vanguard to be composed of the more intelligent and the more social.

Sympathy prompts not only to the conferring of pleasure, it prompts also to the prevention of injurious conduct, on the partof others, towards the being or beings with whom sympathy is felt. A conception of the advantage of mutual aid may assist as a motive in this. The earliest mutual aid was, to a great extent, one of coöperation against enemies. In one way and another, this mutual defence must have extended to the compulsion of positive beneficial conduct, on the part of others, towards the being or beings with whom sympathy was felt. Such compulsion may be exerted by different tribes, or by different members of the same tribe, on each other; the means of compulsion are revenges of different sorts, benefit, assistance of some sort, being, on the other hand, often the reward of ready compliance. This compulsion may be felt as greater or less according to the degree of reluctance to perform any form of action required under pain of the penalty. If the thoughts are occupied with the possible reward, and not with the punishment, then no outer compulsion is felt, but a choice of advantage is made. This choice again may not be wholly one of selfish calculation; some altruistic feeling may be involved. A form of action at first chosen with reluctance, and merely because of the fear of punishment or revenge, may come to be performed later without hesitation, and more under the hope of reward than the fear of punishment; and this same form of action may come to be performed finally with sympathy as the prominent feeling, the hope of reward becoming more and more secondary. Each increase of sympathy, again, reacts upon the environment as represented by other individuals, and thus the relations and influence of men on each other become more and more complicated. Any habit of cruelty or hostility which has been, at former stages, united with prosperity may thus become, through the action and reaction of increasing altruism, a disadvantage to the individual member of any society; or it is also conceivable that a formerly advantageous egoistic form of action may become disadvantageous through the advent of some new influence from outside the particular society in which it is practised. Father Phil, in Lover's story of "Handy Andy," relates an anecdote of an engagement in Spain, in which the dragoons of a regiment, retreating under hot fire, paused at the crossing of a river to take up behind them some women of the camp-followers, who had difficulty in crossing, and thereupon found themselves followed by cheers, instead of shots, from their French foes. I do not intend to intimate that the motive for thedeed was self-interest; but it is easy to conceive similar instances in which humanity might become an advantage and be practised at first from self-interest, not by individuals merely but by a whole tribe; this must be frequently the case when less civilized peoples come in contact with more civilized peoples. And this leads us to remark that habits of sympathy and justice exercised within a people will be likely to manifest themselves in relations with other peoples also, in degree as the sympathy is real and the benevolence inward. But the attitudes of different peoples towards each other remain long hostile, since the partial surrender of tribal or national interests necessary to compact often involves too great sacrifices to be acquiesced in at an early stage of development. And the individual is necessarily influenced, to a great extent, by the feelings of those among whom he is born, with regard to the hostile nation. But this is retracing our analysis.

Altruism is thus increased directly by the perception and choice of coöperation as advantageous, by the spread of altruistic feeling and the compulsion of the social environment, as well as by the higher means of persuasion and affection, in which altruism itself affects the increase of altruism; and it is also increased indirectly by the aid of natural selection between individuals, families, neighborhoods, and groups of all sorts, coöperation becoming more and more advantageous with the increased density of population.

It is scarcely necessary to remark that natural selection acts also with regard to the egoistic or personal virtues; for these have regard, primarily, to the preservation of the individual in the best condition for labor and cheerfulness. It is evident that in this direction also the moral must continually gain the advantage. Either the injurious is perceived and avoided, or the individual failing to perceive and avoid it suffers physical injury and deterioration, and, unless a different course is adopted in time, brings at last destruction to himself or to his stock. But our analysis goes further; for the egoistic virtues are evidently not purely egoistic; and society will come with time to insist on this fact, and to render these virtues still more advantageous and their neglect still more disadvantageous; while the growth of the altruistic feelings will infuse the individual with the desire to perform his duty to others in this respect also. The purely egoistic character of so-called personal virtues, for the assertion of which somuch has been written, is a myth. No man can make a sot of himself or indeed injure himself in any way without reducing his power to benefit society and harming those nearest to him. Self-preservation and the preservation of one's own health may conflict with altruistic virtues at times; that is to say, virtues both of which are altruistic, though the altruistic character of one is more direct than the other, may conflict; in which case, choice is necessary. And it is strange to note, at this point, that just those systems which lay most stress on individual welfare, that is, emphasize the fact that the preservation of individual health and the development of individual capacity are advantageous to society, are the very ones that also defend the freedom of the individual to practise so-called personal vice. The two theories do not well accord; surely, if the individual is of so much importance to society, his vice cannot be without injurious results to it. Only when egoistic care for health has become infused with the higher altruism, does it become truly virtue; then care for self ceases to be the mere means to isolated pleasure, and becomes the means to the happiness of others where it was often, before, the means to their misery, and even their destruction.

In the evolution of higher animal forms from lower, the lower do not necessarily pass out of existence with the development of the higher; in society, however, the contact is close and continuous, and the competition unremitting; there is, therefore, some elimination, though a very gradual one, of lower types. The lower forms may exist for a long time beside the higher; in other words, society as a whole progresses slowly on account of the immense complication of relations within it. We find it including many grades of altruistic and egoistic virtue, and can testify only to a progress that renders the extremes of vice and cruelty less and less the rule and more and more the exception.

And this brings us to the further consideration of a point not long ago touched upon, namely, the high degree of civilization attained by certain ancient peoples. Not the whole race of man, it is evident, advances together to higher grades of civilization, as not all individuals or all lines of descent in the same society fall under the same influences and advance at a like rate. At the present date, the greater part of Africa as well as portions of other countries are inhabited by rude and savage tribes, the rest of the world, not classed as savage, representing very many differentgrades and phases of progress. After the conquest of Greece by Rome and of Rome by the tribes from the North, the higher degree of civilization of the conquered nations was partly lost by them and partly acquired by their conquerors; that is, nothing was really lost, but two different forces met and partly neutralized each other; the resultant represented, in this case as in all others, the complication, the algebraic sum, of the two. In the essay before referred to, Dr. Petzoldt calls attention to the extremely unique character of the productions of Inner-African tribes before they have come in contact with white men, and cites Bastian's testimony that even one short visit from a white man is often enough to destroy the peculiarity of the type. "New tendencies are introduced, and the stability is immediately diminished, though only to progress gradually to a newer, higher form." The comparative sparsity of the human race in ancient times rendered it possible for single isolated peoples to attain to a high degree of culture while the greater part of the earth was inhabited by the uncivilized; and the increase of the species since that time, though necessitating wider contact and closer relations, and so rendering the newer civilization necessarily a wider one, has yet not been sufficient to make isolated savagery in lands not reached by the spreading circle, impossible. The ancient civilization was lost, but not lost in the sense that its force ever perished; it found its full representation—but no more—in the result that arose from blending with a lower grade. The same process is being repeated wherever civilized man, on the borders of civilization, comes in contact with savage or half-civilized man. The two races may dwell side by side, separated from intimate association, but their contiguity is yet marked by a certain amount of change on both sides,—a change the greater the greater the degree of association and the greater the isolation of those on the border-lands from the rest of the civilized world, and the longer this state of things persists. We are here reminded particularly of Fechner's formula of the process of evolution, in which the concepts of isolation as favoring the steady advancement of the process on its own peculiar lines, and of new contact as new disturbance from which issues new development, are most prominent. If we regard especially the ethical features of this contact at the borders, it may be remarked both that savages gain gradually more humanity from contact with civilized nations, and that white men, onthe other hand, lose, in constant contact with savages, some of the humanity which they have displayed in the midst of their own nation. They grow used to sights of cruelty, much of which it is impossible for them to prevent; they are roused to anger, hatred, and retaliation by acts of deception, treachery, and cruelty, and they find, moreover, that kindness is often mistaken for weakness by the bloody and revengeful people with whom they have to do, who are often used to respect only or chiefly the brute force which can compel obedience. I do not intend here to represent the white man as the incarnation of sympathy and humanity; even in the midst of society, as we have already sufficiently noticed, his apparent altruism may be, to a large degree, the outcome of selfish motives, natural tendency being restrained through fear of punishment or hope of gain of some sort. There are grades within societies as well as grades represented by societies as wholes. But several things are to be taken into account in the comparison of the white man with the savage under circumstances of contact. In the first place, we have to remember that, while the white man is, to a great extent, withdrawn from the control of the society to which he belongs, secure from their judgment for the time being and with the prospect, often, of probable security from it for all time, since reports of his actions may never reach the ears of more civilized societies, the individual savage is still restrained by whatever of law and moral sentiment exists in his own tribe; his vengeance, whatever it is, is to a great extent under the control of his chiefs. Again, the power of the savage to inflict injury is not so great as that of the white man, who has all the implements of advanced coöperation at his disposal. The mere love of power always presents a temptation, and pleasure in demonstrating superiority is a common human emotion. Furthermore, it must be considered that the opportunities for selfishness afforded on the borders of civilization are likely to attract, in the majority, just those men whose social ties and social instinct are weakest, whose greed perceives here the opportunity of unscrupulous gratification, and is drawn by it. And lastly, it is to be noticed that not by any means all the individuals belonging to more advanced societies who come in contact with savages use them with inhumanity, or even retaliate on treachery and injury. The great differences exhibited, under such circumstances, by persons whose opportunities have been very similar is a strong argument in favorof inherent, innate grades of altruism, and so of hereditary character. The same is true of the fact that the Greeks and Romans did retain much of their culture even in contact with lower grades of civilization, handing it down, in a degree, to this day; and that their conquerors only in the lapse of many generations pulled themselves up to this level, which was attained, at last, rather in countries removed from direct contact with it and so, we may argue, to a great extent, through their own natural evolution. The general analysis of the amalgamation at the borders of civilization still remains true in the long run, however individual savages and individual white men may represent exceptions to it.

Mr. Stephen's analysis of the development of altruism from egoism, while in the main true and one of the most minute analyses on this subject that we possess, opens, through its ambiguity of terms, the way to inaccuracy of thought and to errors of theory into which I am not at all sure that the author does not himself fall at some points. Starting with an implied definition of sympathy as actual "feeling with" other sentient beings through the intellectual comprehension of their emotions, and acknowledging that sympathy in this sense may not lead directly to altruism, he uses the same word also, later in the analysis, in the higher sense, and at some points appears to confound the two meanings; so that, as there is a similar ambiguity in the use of the word "idiot," or "moral idiot," in the same connection, his theory seems to fall into the mistake of asserting the normal association of intellectual comprehension with altruism. He writes:—

"It is not more true that to think of a fire is to revive the sensations of warmth than it is true that to think of a man is to revive the emotions and thoughts which we attribute to him. To think of him in any other sense is to think of the mere doll or statue, the outside framework, not of the organized mass of consciousness which determines all the relations in which he is most deeply interesting to us." "The primary sympathy is, of course, modified in a thousand ways—by the ease or difficulty with which we can adopt his feelings; by the attractiveness or repulsiveness of the feelings revealed; by the degree in which circumstances force us into coöperation or antagonism; and by innumerable incidental associations which make it pleasant or painful to share his feelings.If by sympathy we mean this power of vicarious emotion, it may give rise to antipathy, to hatred, rivalry, and jealousy, and even tothe diabolical perversion of pleasure in another's pain."[167]"The pain given by your pain may simply induce me to shut my eyes. The Pharisee who passed by on the other side may have disliked the sight of the wounded traveller as much as the good Samaritan. Indeed, the sight of suffering often directs irritation against the sufferer. Dives is often angry with Lazarus for exposing his sores before a respectable mansion, and sometimes goes so far as to think, illogically perhaps, that the beggar must have cultivated his misery in order to irritate the nerves of his neighbors. To give the order: 'Take away that damned Lazarus,' may be as natural an impulse as to say: 'Give him the means of curing his ailments.'"[168]"To believe in the existence of a sentient being is to believe that it has feelings which may persist when I am not aware of them. A real belief, again, implies that, at the moment of belief, I have representative sensations or emotions corresponding to those which imply the actual presence of the object. Again, a material object has an interest only so far as it is a condition of some kind of feeling, and, when the sympathies are not concerned, of some feeling of my own, whether implying or not implying any foretaste of the future. To take any interest in any material object, except in this relation, is unreasonable, as it is unreasonable to desire food which cannot nourish or fire which cannot warm. I want something which has by hypothesis no relation to my wants. The same is true of the sentient object so long, and only so long, as I do not take its sentience into account. But to take the sentience into account is to sympathize, or at least the sympathy is implied in the normalor only possiblecase. The only condition necessary for the sympathy to exist and to be capable therefore of becoming a motive, is that I should really believe in the object, and have, therefore, representative feelings. To believe in it is to feel for it, to have sympathies which correspond to my representations, less vivid as the object is more distant and further from the sphere of my possible influence, but still real and therefore effective motives. Systematically to ignore these relations, then, is to act as if I were an egoist in the extremest sense, and held that there was no consciousness in the world except my own. But really to carry out this principle is to be an idiot, for an essential part of the world as interesting to me is constituted by thefeelings of other conscious agents, and I can only ignore their existence at the cost of losing all the intelligence which distinguishes me from the lower animal."[169]A similar use of the word "idiot" occurs in the following passage with regard to the relations of moral action to conviction: "It is a simple 'objective' fact that a man acts rightly or wrongly in a given case, and a fact which may be proved to him; and, further, though the proof will be thrown away if he is a moral idiot, that is, entirely without the capacities upon which morality is founded, the proof is one which must always affect his character if we suppose the truth to be assimilated, and not the verbal formula to be merely learned by rote."[170]"To learn really to appreciate the general bearings of moral conduct is to learn to be moral in the normally constituted man." Here the author adds, however, "though we must always make the condition that a certain aptitude of character exists."[171]Again he writes: "But it remains to be admitted that there is apparently such a thing as pleasure in the pain of others—pure malignity—which we call 'devilish'to mark that it is abnormal and significant of a perverted nature."[172]And in the same connection—where he is, at first, seemingly intent on proving only the normal connection of pain with the sight of suffering, admitting that this sympathetic pain may lead to brutality instead of altruistic action towards the sufferer—he says: "Sympathy is the natural and fundamental fact. Even the most brutal of mankind are generally sympathetic so far as to feel rather pain than pleasure at the sight of suffering. The scum of a civilized population gathered to pick pockets on a race-course would be pained at the sight of a child in danger of being run over or brutally assaulted by a ruffian, and would be disposed to rescue it, or at least to cheer a rescuer, unless their spontaneous emotion were overpowered by some extrinsic sentiment."[173]And finally: "The direct and normal case is that in which sympathy leads to genuine altruism, or feeling in accordance with that which it reflects."[174]

The terms in these passages are thus evidently very loosely used, and the charge above made is, I think, substantiated,—that theauthor himself finally falls into the error following upon a confusion of the various meanings, and comes to assert what he elsewhere distinctly denies, namely, the normal connection of intellect and morality, of the comprehension of suffering with that form of sympathy which issues in altruistic action. The problem is an interesting one, and it may be well for us to look into it a little further.

During the last few years a number of books have been written in which the attempt has been made to prove the general physical, and especially the cerebral, and so the intellectual inferiority of a large number of criminals. There may be a difference of opinion as to the value of exact weights and measures except in so far as they demonstrate an actual nervous deformity of some sort; and it may be said that the cases examined for distinctly cerebral defect are too few to admit of the formation of any universal, definite, theory or law. But some degree of importance must assuredly be attached, by the unprejudiced reader, to the more purely psychological evidence obtained in many cases, as well as to the evidence of the tendency to brain-disease often found in the direct line of descent. Indeed, in the case of some of the photographs issued with Lombroso's "L'Homme Criminel," not more than a glance is needed to convince one that the possessors of such heads and faces cannot be normal men and women. To this testimony from the criminologists may be added that of many eminent specialists in mental diseases, whose evidence goes to show the degeneration of the moral sense in cases of brain-disease. Maudesley says, for instance, of moral feeling: "Whoever is destitute of it is, to that extent, a defective being; he marks the beginning of race-degeneracy; and if propitious influence do not chance to check or to neutralize the morbid tendency, his children will exhibit a further degree of degeneracy, and be actual morbid varieties. Whether the particular outcome of the morbid strain shall be vice, or madness, or crime, will depend much on the circumstances of life." "When we make a scientific study of the fundamental meaning of those deviations from the sound type which issue in insanity and crime, by searching inquiry into the laws of their genesis, it appears that these forms of human degeneracy do not lie so far asunder as they are commonly supposed to do. Moreover, theory is here confirmed by observation; for it has been pointed out by those whohave made criminals their study, that they oftentimes spring from families in which insanity, epilepsy, or some allied neurosis exists, that many of them are weak-minded, epileptic, or actually insane, and that they are apt to die from diseases of the nervous system and from tubercular diseases."[175]To the history proper of the Jukes, Dugdale has appended a series of tables giving further information as to the stock, environment, and present condition of some two hundred and thirty-three criminals committed for various crimes, each of which crimes heads a separate list. These lists are decidedly interesting, particularly as affording us some considerable information with regard to psychological characteristics and environment, under the headings: "Neglected Children," "Orphans," "Habitual Criminals," "First Offenders," "Reformable," "Hopeless," etc. From the table of percentages we remark that, in the "Neurotic Stock," the highest percentage (40·47) is reached in arson and the crimes against persons, or crimes of impulse, as Dugdale terms them, while 23·03 is the percentage of neurotic stock in the whole number of criminals examined. "This close relationship between nervous disorders and crime," says Dugdale, "runs parallel with the experience of England, where 'the ratio of insane to sane criminals is thirty-four times as great as the ratio of lunatics to the whole population of England, or, if we take half the population to represent the adults which supply the convict prisons, we shall have the criminal lunatics in excess in the high proportion of seventeen to one.'" Dugdale further quotes from Dr. Bruce Thomson, surgeon to the General Prison of Scotland, the following words: "On a close acquaintance with criminals, of eighteen years' standing, I consider that nine in ten are of inferior intellect, but that all are excessively cunning." Dr. Thomson says also: "In all my experience, I have never seen such an accumulation of morbid appearances as I witness in the post-mortem examinations of the prisoners who die here. Scarcely one of them can be said to die of one disease, for almost every organ of the body is more or less diseased; and the wonder to me is that life could have been supported in such a diseased frame."

But with regard to this last quotation, it may be remarked that, although many modern students of crime tend to look upon the general diseased condition of body among criminals as the causeof their criminality, it is generally, as a matter of fact, a cumulative growth, vicious acts appearing now as condition, now as result, in its increase. Vice is directly connected with disease, and crime against others, even where it does not itself directly involve vice, is still likely to be connected with it, since the man who is immoral in one direction is not likely to be restrained from immorality in what is ordinarily considered a direction of lesser wrong; and the self-gratification of vice always presents a temptation to the man of coarser fibre. Dugdale notices that pauperism often appears in the younger members of a family where crime appears in the elder branches, his explanation being that crime is a sign of comparative vigor, pauperism of greater physical weakness.

We have found some connection between intellectual incapacity and moral lack in the shape of crime, but the cases are extreme ones. The question is not: Are the extremes of criminality connected with mental incapacity? but, Is the power of intellectual comprehension, is intelligence, always associated with sympathy and altruism? Is the connection of these two general? Or, conversely: Is lack of sympathy and altruism in general a sign of mental incapacity, of the power of comprehension for another's suffering?

The individual may be supposed to be naturally endowed with a certain basis of tendency, which, as coördinate with a nervous organization that, as organization, is of definite nature, is also definite. I do not intend, here or elsewhere, to lay especial stress on the physical, as distinguished from the psychical; merely, it is convenient for reference. The individual character and life must be the continual progressive issue of this basis of tendency or capacity and the developing and modifying factors of environment. Individuals will, therefore,but in very different degrees and manners, reflect the moral standard of the society as organization, the class, and the family, to which they belong, the importance assumed by the class or family relations being according to the closeness and duration of association, and the natural aptitude of the individual for one or another sort of influence. Aside from altruistic considerations, the individual will find it to his advantage to conform to the standards of these environments, at least in a considerable degree. The standards may, however, conflict, so that there is also a conflict of advantages. Moreover, circumstances may arise such that conformity to all or any of these standardspresents much greater disadvantage than advantage, involving great sacrifice, which may reach even to personal destruction. But while a single anti-social act to avert personal destruction may involve greater advantage to the individual, as life represents an advantage over death, and while such an act is more an advantage and less a disadvantage as it involves less conflict with social standards (if it is the theft of food, for instance, rather than murder), any continued course of crime in so-called civilized society must be attended with many risks to the evil-doer, and present gain may mean future loss of a much higher degree. Deeds conflicting with general social standards are punished by penalties which are larger as the conflict is greater in the eye of the state. The individual who lays himself liable to legal punishment or social ostracism is foolish as well as, in very many cases, bad; of course, it is possible that his conduct may rise above the moral standards as well as that it may fall below them. But we are now considering cases where it is, by the assumption, supposed to fall below them. It is easy to perceive, from this standpoint, that great and persistent criminals are likely to be of inferior intellect, as well as wanting in moral aptitude, although, whatever reasoning capacity they possess being developed in the line of their own interest in their accustomed occupation, they may appear to the more moral, who are not practised in this direction, to possess a high degree of cunning.

The honest man has generally a better chance than the habitual criminal, however small his chance may be. Further, education of any sort, which is also intellectual elevation, gives the individual better chances of earning his own living honestly, and so renders the advantages on this side greater, and also endows with the power of perceiving these advantages. But these are only general truths, applying, again, to extreme cases. There may be cases in which there seems, at least, to be no choice left between crime and a life continually on the verge of starvation; and though the crime means also continual risk, and higher risk as the crime is greater and so, in general, more lucrative, the advantage may still be reckoned by the individual as on its side. In this case, the individual may discover, in the end, that his calculation was mistaken; but the mistake may not be so great, the balance of disadvantage on the side of conformity with social standards so excessive, as to prove him below the average of intellect in hismistaking. The wisest men make many mistakes in calculating the results of their action. Again, the cleverer a man is, the greater is his power to cope with the risk of detection and to avoid it. It may be objected that the single individual cannot hope to compete continually with the organized action of all society, and that the criminal must, at times, submit to some degree of punishment, even if escaping its worst phases. But if he feels no shame at the disgrace of the punishment, it may not mean to him the greater disadvantage.

But here we come round to the altruistic and moral emotions, for shame is present only where the individual has a desire to please, and is pained at the disapproval of others; that is, shame implies and requires, in the degree in which it exists, social and altruistic capacity. Furthermore, when we come to examine the concept of "advantage," we find that it is as relative as that of "end," and will be judged according to the individual predilections; to the non-sympathetic, shameless man it is an advantage to "get on" at whatever cost to others; to the moral man no gain appears an advantage at the expense of principle. And, as there are all degrees of altruism in the bases of character of different individuals, so the advantage, in any particular case, will lie at very different points according to the individual mind reflecting on it. Only the general truths may be asserted, that, even to the man of less than the average moral aptitude, great punishment must appear a disadvantage, while even to the man of considerable moral principle death for the sake of his convictions is a thing to be hesitated at.

We may return to view the question in the light of the general facts of social evolution. We found that only the general assertion could be made, that the advantages of coöperation, the disadvantages of strife and discord, increase with the closer relations of men, and that the adoption of coöperation follows this line of advantage by individual choice, and by the disadvantage under which the less social as the less fit, labor, the latter tending gradually to disappear leaving the field to the more social. Thus the whole progress is the result of the will of the human being, as well as of the other forces of nature; it is only as the individual chooses, that progress is possible. But lower types survive long beside the more progressive, higher ones. The individual is not so reasonable that he always perceives his own more enduringadvantage, or always chooses it even when he perceives it; he may choose momentary gratification at the acknowledged risk, and even with the certainty, of great future loss. Nor can it be averred that the individual always suffers seriously from action at variance with even the average standard; simply, the line of survival gradually changes in favor of altruism, so that escape is less frequent and less probable; and the lines of greatest deviation from the altruism demanded at any period by the line of advance tend to disappear; but the altruism demanded by any line of advance is not, up to the present time, an absolute altruism, nor do all deviations from it result in destruction to the individual even in extreme cases. The fact of the growing disadvantage of selfishness, and its destructive tendency, remains, nevertheless. It may be expressed in another form in the statement that power of all sorts is increased by civilization, and where a coördinate increase of self-restraint does not accompany the increased power, it must lead to destruction, either in the case of the individual, or if not so abruptly, then in the case of his descendants. The closer contact of human beings and increased knowledge and coöperation mean growing opportunity of good or evil, to self and others. The destructive forces lie as well in the workings of social organization, in the will of man, as in nature outside man. Legal justice, public opinion, and the opinion of the smaller circle of personal friends and acquaintances, all have their part. Any degree of social instinct developed in the course of social evolution only assists in rendering social punishments of all sorts the more felt; and thus each increment of advance assists in further advance. Men who persist in action antagonistic to social demands, action which they themselves acknowledge to be immoral, may yet feel the condemnation of society so much, that, even while yet persisting, they destroy their vitality by alcoholism or other excesses to drown regret and remorse; habit chains them, in many cases, where the condemnation of others reaches them only late. But the whole process of social evolution is one of very gradual assimilation, and neither in the world as a whole, in the nation or race, or in the tribe, clan, family, locality, or class, is it one of equal advance on all sides. The coöperation adopted may be, at different points, that of individuals against individuals, of tribes against tribes, of nations against nations, or of classes against classes.

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