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284 utterances, like the above, regarding the impossibility of a society composed of absolutely egoistic individuals. The discussions regarding altruism vs. egoism which we meet with in the treatise, are sometimes quite confusing on account of the author's naive certainty that the good of the individual and the good of society are always (in the particular case as well as in the long run) identical. We have seen that, in the Introduction, society is already compared to an organism. Such being its nature, it is idle to speak of the good of one part as opposed to the good of another; for the good of any particular part (i.e., any individual) clearly must depend upon the 'health of the social organism,' as Mr. Stephen would say. Cumberland does not go so far as some modern writers in pushing this analogy, but it helps to bring out an important side of his system.

So much in general regarding man's 'fitness' for society, so far as an original tendency in the direction of altruistic, as well as egoistic, conduct is concerned. Here man is regarded from the standpoint of society, which is to be compared to an organism rather than to a collection of mutually repellent atoms. When Cumberland has the individual more particularly in mind, he is apt to insist more upon the 'rational' nature of man. Before considering this question as to the meaning and scope of Right Reason, let us notice two definitions, and also the author's brief inventory of the powers of the mind. "By man," he says, at the beginning of Chap, ii, "I understand an animal endowed with a mind; and Hobbes himself, in his treatise of Human Nature, acknowledges the mind to be one of the principal parts of man." By 'animal' is understood "what the philosophers agree to be found in brutes: the powers of receiving increase by nourishment, of beginning motion, and of propagating their species." It is not quite clear that Cumberland would allow sensation to brutes.