Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 25.djvu/845

Rh as its operation becomes more pleasurable, and a change of this sort can not but take place as occasions for directly altruistic actions, such as arise out of pain and suffering, become less frequent.

With increased spontaneity in altruistic actions, more pleasurable feelings in the discharge of altruistic duties, and a wider range for altruistic emotions, will inevitably come such an evolution of conduct as must tend greatly to increase the well-being of the community. The care of self will be felt as a duty to others; due care of others will become a source of gratification to self. Society will be simply, on an enlarged scale and in a more varied form, such a community as might be formed by a number of kindly, well-meaning persons, of good capacity and pleasing manners, brought together for purposes of travel, research, or pleasure. In such a community it would be felt that each person's first duty was to take due care of self, first as just to himself, and secondly (yet chiefly) as a duty to the rest of the community. But it would also be felt by each member of such a community that he must be careful of the interests of others, ready to be of use to any other members of the community who required assistance such as he could give individually, or to combine with others where the assistance of several might seem to be required. Picture the relations of such a community, all of good-will, kindly, and anxious that the business of the community should go on so as to give pleasure to all, and it will be at once seen how little there is of actual selfishness in due care of self, how such care may be, nay, must be, a duty owed to all the rest; while, on the other hand, it will become clear also how each member of such a community is interested in the existence among all of a kindly interest on the part of each in the well-being of the rest. The social body, whether we consider the family, or the gathering of families into communities, or the collection of communities into nations, or the multitude of nations which form the population of the earth, may be regarded as an aggregate which should be pervaded by such ideas as are found essential for the comfort and happiness of gatherings casually brought together. The due subordination of self to others in certain relations, and of others to self in relations not less important, which is found in all such gatherings on a small scale and of comparatively uniform character—as in the passengers on an ocean-steamship, the members of a company of travelers, the fellows of a scientific expedition, or even a pleasure-party—is what is necessary for the well-being of the body social; and out of this necessity, instinctively recognized, and exercising its influence steadily in the process of the evolution of races, nations, and the human family as a whole, seem to have sprung all those duties between man and man, between race and race, and between nation and nation, which form the present code of social morals, and will hereafter—developed and improved—form the moral code of perfected man. "What now, in even the highest natures," as the great teacher of our day says, "is occasional and feeble may be