The first commandment of animal ethics is, therefore: "Flee pain"; and closely associated with it is a second commandment furnished by the insatiability of the organism, the impulse to happiness, to increase of life. The principle of Spencer's ethics, according to which normal living is right living, would result in stagnation. Right living consists, on the contrary, in progress, in passing beyond the normal. No educator would hesitate for an instant to pronounce the continuance of a pupil upon a present normal immoral, and to oppose it with all his powers. From day to day the developing organism advances the line of its normal activity. And as in the individual, so in the species: every new generation exceeds in a certain measure the activity of the last. Not rest, but motion, constitutes the normal; not rest, but motion, is happiness, and the spring of happiness. Not that being which has no wants, but that which develops and satisfies the greatest possible number of wants, is the happiest, leads the most pleasurable life. When we apply these principles to the animals, we reach the conception that all such as lead a solitary life live morally when they endeavor, with all their powers, to better their own condition. That they injure plants and other animals in so doing need not trouble us, since they are forced to do so in order to maintain life. The principle on which animal life is based is hence preeminently egoistic and acknowledges no other right than that of might. Spencer, in speaking of altruism on the lowest plane of animal life, makes the fundamental and quite fatal mistake that he does not first sharply and distinctly define egoism. Had he done this, he would certainly have found that, for egoism, as for altruism, the criterion of consciousness, of will, is indispensable. In his definition of altruism as consisting in those acts which in any way benefit others, he does nothing less than get rid of egoism altogether, since there are no acts which do not, in the end, benefit others than the performer. The greater number of the young brought forth by lowest organisms serve as food for other species, and hence the parent animal, in bringing forth such numbers, favors these species rather than her own flesh and blood. The fly would act altruistically, according to Spencer's definition, in being caught in the net of the spider.