Ethics: Origin and Development

about animal and human nature; but it is correct. Nearly all ethical writers have hitherto started with the unproved postulate that the strongest of all the instincts of man, and more so of animals, is the self-preservation instinct, which, owing to a certain looseness of their terminology, they have identified with selfassertion, or egoism properly speaking. They conceived this instinct as including, on the one hand, such primary impulses as self-defence, selfpreservation, and the very act of satisfying hunger, and, on the other hand, such derivative feelings as the passion for domination, greed, hatred, the desire for revenge, and so on. This mixture, this hodge-podge of instincts and feelings among animals and modern civilized men, they represented as an all-pervading and all-powerful force, which finds no opposition in animal and human nature, excepting in a certain feeling of benevolence or pity. But once the nature of all animals and of man was recognized as such, the only obvious course was to lay a special stress upon the softening influence of those moral teachers who appealed to mercy, and who borrowed the spirit of their teachings from a world that lies outside nature-outside and above the world which is accessible to our senses. And they endeavoured to strengthen the influences of their teachings by the support of a supernatural power. If one refused to accept this view, as did Hobbes, for example, the only alternative was to attribute a special importance to the coercive action of the State, inspired by lawgivers of extraordinary genius- which meant, of course, merely to credit with the possession of the "truth" not the religious preacher but the lawmaker.

Beginning with the Middle Ages, the founders of ethical schools, for the most part ignorant of Nature-to the study of which they preferred metaphysics,had represented the self-assertive instincts of the individual as the primary condition of the existence of animals, as well as of man. To obey the promptings of these instincts was considered as the fundamental law of nature; to disobey-would lead to sure defeat and to the ultimate disappearance of the species. Therefore, to combat these egotistic promptings was possible only if man called to his aid the supernatural forces. The triumph of moral principles was thus represented as a triumph of man over nature, which he may hope to achieve only with an aid from without, coming as a reward for his good intentions.

We were told, for instance, that there is no greater virtue, no greater triumph of the spiritual over the physical than self-sacrifice for the welfare of our fellow-men. But the fact is that self-sacrifice in the interest of an ants' nest, or for the safety of a group of birds, a herd of antelopes, or a band of monkeys, is a zoological fact of everyday occurrence in Nature-a fact for which hundreds upon hundreds of animal species require nothing else but naturally evolved