Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 2.djvu/601

Rh be wiser and more manly to consider how far the first should go in mitigation of the last. Is it stupidity or is it moral cowardice which leads men to continue professing a creed that makes self-sacrifice a cardinal principle, while they urge the sacrificing of others, even to the death, when they trespass against us? Is it blindness, or is it an insane inconsistency, which makes them regard as most admirable the bearing of evil for the benefit of others, while they lavish admiration on those who, out of revenge, inflict great evils in return for small ones suffered? Surely our barbarian code of right needs revision, and our barbarian standard of honor should be somewhat changed. Let us deliberately recognize what good they represent and what mixture of bad there is with it. Courage is worthy of respect when displayed in the maintenance of legitimate claims and in the repelling of aggressions, bodily or other. Courage is worthy of yet higher respect when danger is faced in defence of claims common to self and others, as in resistance to invasion. Courage is worthy of the highest respect when risk to life or limb is dared in defence of others; and becomes grand when those others have no claims of relationship, and still more when they have no claims of race. But though a bravery which is altruistic in its motive is a trait we cannot too highly applaud, and though a bravery which is legitimately egoistic in its motive is praise-worthy, the bravery that is prompted by aggressive egoism is not praiseworthy. The admiration accorded to the "pluck" of one who fights in a base cause is a vicious admiration, essentially demoralizing to those who feel it. Like the physical powers, courage, which is a concomitant of these, is to be regarded as a servant of the higher emotions—very valuable, indispensable even, in its place; and to be honored when discharging its function in subordination to these higher emotions. But otherwise not more to be honored than the like attribute as seen in brutes.

Quite enough has been said to show that there must be a compromise between the opposite standards of conduct on which the religions of amity and enmity respectively insist, before there can be scientific conceptions of social phenomena. Even on passing affairs, such as the proceedings of philanthropic bodies and the dealings of nation with nation, there cannot be rational judgments without a balance between the self-asserting emotions and the emotions which put a limit to self-assertion, with an adjustment of the corresponding beliefs. Still less can there be rational judgments of past social evolution, or of social evolution in the future, if the opposing actions which these opposing creeds sanction are not both continuously recognized as essential. No mere impulsive recognition, now of the purely-egoistic doctrine and now of the purely-altruistic one, will suffice. The curve described by a planet cannot be understood by thinking at one moment of the centripetal force and at another moment of the tangential force; but the two must be kept before