Page:Philosophical Review Volume 6.djvu/201

185 itself. This consciousness of kind is the elementary, the generic social fact; it is sympathy, fellow-feeling, in the literal as distinguished from the popular sense of the word.… The contact or grouping of creatures of the same kind,… when accompanied by a consciousness of their identity in kind and by imitative actions, constitutes association and the beginnings of society.… All social instincts, social feelings of every description, have their beginnings in the feeling of identity of kind in creatures of the same species" (Annals of the American Academy, March, 1895, p. 750). The earlier passage calls attention to a point which is later ignored, the relation between consciousness of kind and sympathy. Indeed, in the present work, consciousness of kind is presented as the cause, and sympathy as the effect, of society (pp. vi, 25). Professor Giddings is wrestling with the old problem of the genesis of altruistic feeling, and has obscured the issue by adopting novel terms, without defining their relations to those familiar to every beginner in ethics. Elsewhere in the earlier article (p. 752), he raises the question whether conflict is antecedent to consciousness of kind and imitation, and declares that upon this question the followers of Hobbes differ from his own views. Nothing in this volume indicates a familiarity with the line of English ethical writers, who have been grappling with the same problem, and whose contributions to ethical thought centre about their theory of sympathy. Compare the preceding passage with the following quotation from one who has been called the scientific discoverer of the principle of sympathy. "Take a general survey of the universe, and observe the force of sympathy through the whole animal creation, and the easy communication of sentiments from one thinking being to another. In all creatures that prey not upon others and are not agitated with violent passions, there appears a remarkable desire of company, which associates them together, without any advantages they can ever propose to reap from their union. This is still more conspicuous in man, as being the creature of the universe who has the most ardent desire of society, and is fitted for it by the most advantages.… Whatever other passions we may be actuated by … the soul or animating principle of them all is sympathy." Yet the only other than nominal reference to Hume in Professor Giddings' book is the doubtful statement (p. 6), that Comte was indebted to Hume for his notions of causation, supported by citation of an address in which Huxley argues that Comte may never have read Hume; and the author's somewhat contemptuous judgment of ethical speculation