tentionally endures a painful death
to save them from suffering. The animal sacrifices herself, but without
foresight of the result, and therefore without moral worth. This is
merely the most striking exemplification of the general process of the
development of morality. Conduct is first regarded purely with a view
to the effects upon the agent, and is therefore enforced by extrinsic
penalties, by consequences, that is, supposed to be attached to us by
the will of some ruler, natural or supernatural. The instinct which
comes to regard such conduct as bad in itself, which implies a dislike
of giving pain to others, and not merely a dislike to the gallows,
grows up under such probation until the really moralised being acquires
feelings which make the external penalty superfluous. This,
indubitably, is the greatest of all changes, the critical fact which
decides whether we are to regard conduct simply as useful, or also to
regard it as moral in the strictest sense. But I should still call it a
development and not a reversal of the previous process. The conduct
which we call virtuous is the same conduct externally which we before
regarded as useful. The difference is that the simple fact of its
utility, that is, of its utility to others and to the race in general,
has now become also the sufficient motive for the action as well as the
implicit cause of the action. In the earlier stages, when no true
sympathy existed, men and animals were still forced to act in a certain
way because it was beneficial to others. They now act in that way
because they are conscious that it is beneficial to others. The whole
history of moral evolution seems to imply this. We may go back to a
period at which the moral law is identified with the general customs of
the race; at which there is no perception of any clear distinction
between that which is moral and that which is simply customary; between
that which is imposed by a law in the strict sense and that which is
dictated by general moral principles. In such a state of things, the
motives for obedience partake of the nature of "blind instincts". No
definite reason for them is present to the mind of the agent, and it
does not occur to him even to demand a reason. "Our fathers did so and
we do so" is the sole and sufficient explanation of their conduct. Thus
instinct again may be traced back by evolutionists to the earliest
period at which the instincts implied in the relations between the
sexes