For the purposes of this lecture I shall classify ultimate ends as either egoistic or altruistic—egoistic ends being those that are immediately connected with, or centred in, the agent; altruistic ends being those that are not. But I beg you to remember that this distinction does not correspond to that between right and wrong. Egoism is not necessarily vicious, nor is altruism necessarily virtuous. Indeed, as I shall have occasion to point out later, the blackest vices, such as cruelty and hatred, are often altruistic.
This is an unusual, though not, I think, an unreasonable, use of language. “Egoism” and “altruism” are terms historically associated with the moral theories which regard happiness as the only end of action, but are under the necessity of distinguishing between actions designed to secure the happiness of the agent and actions designed to secure the happiness of other people. I do not accept these theories, though I borrow their phraseology. Happiness may, or may not, be the highest of all ultimate ends, the one to which all others should give way. But it seems to me quite misleading to call it the only one. To describe the sensual man, the vain man, the merely selfish man, the miser, the ascetic, the man moved by rational self-love, the man absorbed in the task of “self-realisation,” the man consumed by the passion for posthumous fame, as all pursuing the same egoistic end by different means, is surely to confuse distinctions of great moral importance without any gain of scientific clarity. In like manner, to suppose that the man who spends himself in the service (say) of his family, his country, or his church, is only striving for the “happiness” of the human race, or of certain selected members of the human race, is (it seems to me) to ignore the plain teaching of daily experience. As there are many egoistic ends besides our own happiness, so there are many altruistic ends besides the happiness of others. The extended sense, therefore, in which I employ these terms seems justified by facts.
II
I shall not attempt to determine the point at which we can first clearly discriminate between the “egoistic” and “altruistic” elements in animal instinct. Evidently, however, it is anterior to and independent of any conceptual recognition either of an ego or an alter. It might be argued that there is an altruistic element in the most egoistic instincts. Eating, multiplying, fighting, and running away—acts plainly directed towards preserving and satisfying the individual—also conduce to the preservation of the race. But, however this may be, the converse is certainly untrue. There are altruistic instincts into which no element of egoism enters. Of these the most important is parental, especially maternal, love: the most amazing are the impulses which regulate the complex polity of (for example) a hive of bees. In these cases one organism will work or fight or endure for others: it will sacrifice its life for its offspring, or for the commonwealth of which it is a member. Egoism is wholly lost in altruism.
Now, I suppose that, in the order of causation, all these animal instincts, be they egoistic or altruistic, must be treated as contrivances for aiding a species in the struggle for existence. If anything be due to selection, surely these must be. This is plainly true of the egoistic appetites and impulses on which depend the maintenance of life and its propagation. It must also be true of the altruistic instincts. Take, for instance, the case of parental devotion. Its survival value is clearly immense. The higher animals, as at present constituted, could not exist without it; and though, for all we can say to the contrary, development might have followed a different course, and a race not less effectively endowed than man might flourish though parental care played no greater part in the life-history of its members than it does in the life-history of a herring, yet this is not what has actually happened. Altruistic effort, in the world as we know it, is as essential to the higher organisms as the self-regarding instincts and appetites are to organic life in general; and there seems no reason for attributing to it a different origin.
Can this be said with a like confidence about the higher portions of the ethical scale? Are these also due to selection?
Evidently the difference between primitive instincts and developed morality is immense; and it is as great in the egoistic as in the non-egoistic region of ethics. Ideals of conduct, the formulation of ends, judgments of their relative worth, actions based on principles, deliberate choice between alternative policies, the realised distinction between the self and other personalities or other centres of feeling— all these are involved in developed morality, while in animal ethics they exist not at all, or only in the most rudimentary forms.
Compare, for instance, a society of bees and a society of men. In both there is division of labour; in both there is organised effort towards an end which is other and greater than the individual good of any single member of the community. But though there are these deep-lying resemblances between the two cases, how important are the differences which divide them! In the bee-hive altruism is obeyed, but not chosen. Alternative ends are not contrasted. No member of the community thinks that it could do something different from, and more agreeable than, the inherited task. Nor in truth could it. General interest and individual interest are never opposed, for they are never distinguished. The agent never compares, and therefore never selects.
Far different are the ethical conditions requiring consideration when we turn from bees to men. Here egoism and altruism are not only distinguished in reflection; they may be, and often are, incompatible in practice. Nor does this conflict of ends only show itself between these two great ethical divisions; it is not less apparent within them. Here, then, we find ourselves in a world of moral conflict very faintly foreshadowed in animal ethics. For us, ultimate ends are many. They may reinforce each other, or they may weaken each other. They may harmonise, or they may clash. Personal ends may prove incompatible with group ends: one group end may prove incompatible with another. Loyalty may be ranged against loyalty, altruism against altruism; nor is there any court of appeal which can decide between them.
But there are yet other differences between the ethics of instinct and the ethics of reflection. Instincts are (relatively) definite and stable; they move in narrow channels; they cannot easily be enlarged in scope, or changed in character. The animal mother, for example, cares for its young children, but never for its young grandchildren. The lifelong fidelity of the parent birds in certain species (a fidelity seemingly independent of the pairing season, or the care of particular broods) never becomes the nucleus of a wider association. Altruistic instincts may lead to actions which equal, or surpass, man’s highest efforts of abnegation; but the actions are matters of routine, and the instincts never vary. They emerge in the same form at the same stage of individual growth, like any other attribute of the species—its colour, for instance, or its claws. And if they be, like colour and claws, the products of selection, this is exactly what we should expect. But then, if the loyalties of man be also the product of selection, why do they not show a similar fixity?