Our long discussion of moral ideas regarding such modes of conduct as directly concern other men’s welfare has at last come to an end. We have seen that they may be ultimately traced to a variety of sources: to the influence of habit or education, to egoistic considerations of some kind or other which have given rise to moral feelings, to notions of social expediency, to disinterested likings or dislikes, and, above all, to sympathetic resentment or sympathetic approval springing from an altruistic disposition of mind. But how to account for this disposition? Our explanation of that group of moral ideas which we have been hitherto investigating is not complete until we have found an answer to this important question. I shall therefore in the next chapter examine the origin and development of the altruistic sentiment.
CHAPTER XXXIV
THE ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE ALTRUISTIC SENTIMENT
THERE is one form of the altruistic sentiment which man shares with all mammals and many other animals, namely, maternal affection. As regards its origin various theories have been set forth.
According to Aristotle, parents love their children as being portions of themselves.[1] A similar explanation of maternal affection has been given by some modern writers.[2] Thus Professor Espinas regards this sentiment as modified self-love and love of property. The female, he says, at the moment when she gives birth to little ones resembling herself, has no difficulty in recognising them as the flesh of her flesh; the feeling she experiences towards them is made up of sympathy and pity, but we cannot exclude from it an idea of property which is the most solid support of sympathy. She feels and understands up to a certain point that these young ones which are herself at the same time belong to her; the love of herself, extended to those who have gone out from her, changes egoism into sympathy and the proprietary instinct into an affectionate impulse.[3] This hypothesis, however, seems to me to be very inadequate. It does not explain why, for instance, a bird takes more care of her eggs than of other matter segregated from her body, which may equally well be regarded as a part of herself. Nor does it account for a foster-mother’s affection for her adopted offspring.[4] Of this many instances have been noticed in the lower animals; and among some savage peoples adopted children are said to be treated by their foster-parents with the same affection as if they were their own flesh and blood.[5]
[1] Aristotle, Ethica Nicomachea, viii. 12. 2 sq.
[2] Hartley, Observations on Man, i. 496 sq. Fichte, Das System der Sittenlehre, p. 433.
[3] Espinas, Des sociétés animales (2nd ed.), p. 444 sq., quoted by Ribot, Psychology of the Emotions, p. 280.
[4] Cf. Spencer, Principles of Psychology, ii. 624.
[5] Murdoch, ‘Ethnol. Results of the Point Barrow Expedition,’ in Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn. ix. 419 (Point Barrow Eskimo). Thomson, Savage Island, p. 135.