r the good of others, and tending even towards the destruction of the
actor, could hardly be accounted for on Darwinian principles alone; for
self-immolators must but rarely leave direct descendants, while the
community they benefit must by their destruction tend, so far, to {193}
morally deteriorate. But devotion to others of the same community is by no
means _all_ that has to be accounted for. Devotion to the whole human race,
and devotion to God--in the form of asceticism--have been and are very
generally recognized as "good;" and the Author contends that it is simply
impossible to conceive that such ideas and sanctions should have been
developed by "Natural Selection" alone, from only that degree of
unselfishness necessary for the preservation of brutally barbarous
communities in the struggle for life. That degree of unselfishness once
attained, further improvement would be checked by the mutual opposition of
diverging moral tendencies and spontaneous variations in all directions.
Added to which, we have the principle of reversion and atavism, tending
powerfully to restore and reproduce that more degraded anterior condition
whence the later and better state painfully emerged.

Very few, however, dispute the complete distinctness, here and now, of the
ideas of "duty" and "interest" whatever may have been the origin of those
ideas. No one pretends that ingratitude may, in any past abyss of time,
have been a virtue, or that it may be such now in Arcturus or the Pleiades.
Indeed, a certain eminent writer of the utilitarian school of ethics has
amusingly and very instructively shown how radically distinct even in his
own mind are the two ideas which he nevertheless endeavours to identify.
Mr. John Stuart Mill, in his examination of "Sir William Hamilton's
Philosophy," says,[208] if "I am informed that the world is ruled by a
being whose attributes are infinite, but what they are we cannot learn, nor
what the principles of his government, except that 'the highest human
morality which we are capable of conceiving' does not sanction them;
convince me of it, and I will bear my fate as I may. But when I am told
that I must believe this, and at the same time call this being by the {194}
names which express and affirm the highest human morality, I say in plain
terms that I will not. Whatever power such a being may have over me, there
is one thing which he shall not do: he shall not compel me to worship him.
I will call no bei