Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 9.djvu/409

 HINTON'S LATER THOUGHT. 397 phraseology. His latest attitude seems to have been the result of, if it was not coincident with, that careful collection of social and especially moral facts which during the last two years largely replaced theory in Hinton's MSS. These data are of considerable interest and will, when collected, be found of distinct value for the study of moral phenomena. Altruism, therefore, gave place to the study of facts, apart from either others or self: " Think of others " became " Think of what is wanted ". " The real power," he wrote during the last few months of his life, " is not in trying to think of others, but in thinking of facts, in attending to the traceable. By doing that, the transferring of the thought to others is brought. To think of others directly, instead of through the effect of thinking of the traceable, is really a delusion." Hinton still used the word " altruism," although the conception was slightly altered. To make it mean merely sacrifice, he said, is to make it absurd. That is " making oneself, and not the good of others, determine it ". And even so early as 1871 he thus criticises what had been a favourite expression of his own : " Xot the self cast out but its rule ; it is as the sense-impression in thought re- mains for use ; but knowledge is the casting out of its rule ". The question was, not : "Wliat is the law ? How readesl thou ? It was rather : "What are the facts ? "What do those facts call on us to do ? The major premiss in the ethical syllogism was always : It is natural to do what is wanted. Hinton speaks very clearly regarding the present social condition. It would be difficult to surpass the occasional energy of his denunciations regarding the unnatural greed of wealth a greed which, as he pointed out, would be recog- nised as such, and treated accordingly, in any other relation of life and the sharply defined divisions of class. It was, however, in the present state of the sexual relations that he found most evil. The selfishness of monogamy and the home, the cruelty of virtue, the rigidity of arbitrary rules and feelings in regard to all such questions seemed to him unparalleled before in Christendom, or out of it. In the Protean evils which are grouped around that part of life Hinton found a rcductio ad absurd u in of the present morality. It was partly because the evil he saw was so intense, although chiefly because of the power here stored up and waiting to be liberated, that he felt that around the question of mar- riage the chief battle of morals would have to be fought. When that was won, when it was possible to follow traceable needs even there, everything would be won. Hinton always said that he was enabled to reach this