One of the most significant of phylogenetic laws is formulated by Haeckel in these words: “The short, quick history of an individual organism is a compressed story of the long, slow history of the species to which the organism belongs.” Now this law holds good for the history of the human species as well as for that of the lower tribes of life. And here it embraces not only the history of the bodily but also that of the psychical development. Consequently the law under which the moral evolution of man is going on may be stated in this way: The history of the development of conscience within a social group (clan, tribe, nation) is a compressed story of the long, slow history of the development of conscience in humanity at large, that is to say, between the groups composing the human race. And since law codes, private and public, are essentially embodiments of the growing and clarifying conscience, this mode of the ethical evolution may be expressed in strictly juristic terms as follows: “The development of international law follows step by step the earlier development of municipal law.”[771] With this law in mind we may define moral progress in the international domain as the gradual assimilation of international to intranational ethics, or, in other words, the growing conformity of the standard of public morality to that of private morality. [Sidenote: The gradual moralizing of the relations of the advanced to the backward races: _The White Man’s Burden_] As thus defined, a special expression of progress in international morality is found in the growing recognition by governments that the obligations of the strong toward the weak are the same for nations as for individuals. A public conscience that is like the best private conscience is constantly becoming more and more a regulative force in the relations of the superior to the inferior races.[772] Unhappily that exploitation of the weaker by the stronger races, which makes up so large a part of the history of the past ages, still goes on; but it is, in general, less grossly unethical than ever before, while with each succeeding generation the protest of the common conscience of the civilized world against all unfair and oppressive treatment of the backward by the more advanced races grows more earnest and insistent.