ions, it enjoys it. By sacrificing its life for
the hive or the nest, it satisfies an altruistic or social instinct.
Cannot man also be more happy in giving than receiving? How can we
explain the great sacrifices, the martyrs who suffer and die for their
country, for their family, for science, for an idea, if enthusiasm--an
expanded sentiment of pleasure--did not lead man to disinterested
sacrifice, or if an inner obsession did not find its satisfaction in
the welfare of humanity?

Let us seek all measures which by social adaptation can ennoble our
human egoism, reduce it to its indispensable and just measure, and
maintain it in proper equilibrium, by the aid of an active altruism;
that is to say, by social habits of self-sacrifice for the benefit of
the community. We shall then obtain a paradise on earth, no doubt very
relative, but far preferable to our present anarchy based on the
strife of personal interests.

The chief thing wanting is a good hereditary quality among human
individuals, a quality which is still entirely left to chance, by the
most deplorable selection; the second requisite is the education of
character and will in our children. Our religion and our schools have
shown themselves incapable of raising the bulk of the people above
barbarism, that is to say from apathy, vulgarity of sentiment,
routine, ignorance and prejudice. No doubt intellectual culture and
religious ethics have accomplished a certain amount of moral progress,
but the methods employed in our churches and schools have not advanced
with science. They are in no sense adapted to our present moral wants
and still less to the exigencies of the future.

It is on the basis of a natural human morality, such as we have just
described, that we must found sexual morality or ethics, and it is not
difficult to form clear ideas on this subject, if we take the trouble
to examine the facts explained in the first fourteen chapters of this
book.

From the social and moral point of view we may consider an action as
_positive_ or useful, _neutral_ or indifferent, and _negative_ or
harmful. But the same action may be at the same time positive,
negative or indifferent, relatively to one or more groups of
individuals. But in ethics it is not only a question of the action in
itself, but especially the inner motives which lead to it; for, to
leave the good and ill of society to chance and ignorance, is to deny
the possibility of progress. It is difficult