ABSTRACT
If people define altruism as being all action which, in the normal course of things, benefits others instead of benefiting self, then, from the dawn of life, altruism has been no less essential than egoism. Though, primarily, it is dependent on egoism, yet, secondarily, egoism is dependent on it. But leaving these lower types in which the altruism is physical only, or in which it is physical and automatically psychical only, let us ascend to those in which it is also, to a considerable degree, conscious. The agitation which creatures show when their young are in danger, joined often with efforts on their behalf, as well as grief displayed after loss of their young, make it manifest that in them parental altruism has a concomitant of emotion. A society, like a species, survives only on condition that each generation of its members shall yield to the next, benefits equivalent to those it has received from the last.
