for a man to accomplish
positive social actions, when the moral sentiments of conscience and
duty are wanting. On the other hand, a narrow-minded individual, with
false judgment, will accomplish negative social actions through moral
motives, while in certain cases an individual may accomplish positive
social acts fortuitously through perverse motives. Through vengeance,
a generous legacy may be left which injures an individual, while
profiting the public. Without being perverse, motives may be simply
egoistic and lead to good by calculated egoism.

By altruist, we understand a man animated by powerful moral sentiments
which preside over social humanitarian volitions. By the term pure
egoist, we designate one in whom self forms the exclusive object of
sentiments of sympathy. In himself, the egoist is indifferent from the
moral point of view, so long as he injures no one, and the altruist
himself cannot live without a certain amount of egoism. The ideal of
social sentiment therefore consists in the combined action of
egoistic and altruistic sentiments, adapted to the wants of society
and its members. As among certain ants, there should exist a complete
compensatory regulation between the egoistic sentiments and appetites
on the other hand. The antagonist of altruism is not the egoist, but
the perverse individual whose acts are by instinct almost constantly
negative from the moral point of view. Egoism urges a man in such an
irresistible way to abuse and harm others in order to satisfy himself,
that a pure egoist can rarely remain indifferent from the moral point
of view. These considerations suffice to show the impossibility of
basing social order on pure egoism, as so many people desire.

=Sexual Morality.=--Sexual morality depends upon what we have just
said. By itself, the sexual appetite is indifferent from the moral
point of view. A great confusion of ideas, based on religious
misunderstanding, has led to the term morality being more and more
identified with that of moral conduct in the sexual domain. In short,
ethics has been more or less confounded with sexuality. From this
point of view, a sexually anaesthetic individual is regarded as
extremely "moral," while he is perhaps in other respects a knave. In
reality his sexual indifference has not the least moral value. For the
same reason an invert is not virtuous because he does not seduce
girls.

From the Protestant point of view it is immoral to burden one's wif