The view which regards Ethics as explicable by Egoism is a very imperfect and ambiguous one. For what is the Ego spoken of, and of what does it consist? The view which makes egoism the rule of life, and which some suppose may afford the ultimate rationale of Ethics, is identical with the biological view which we have already discussed. No doubt egoism is the rule of life taken in its widest sense. No doubt the adjustment of the Ego to society, and of society to the Ego, is the rule of life. But egoism only becomes ethical when it, in order of growth, includes love of offspring, love of family, love of fellow-man, regard for the tribe, the nation, or humanity at large. As egoism loses its narrowness, as it loses its exclusive regard for personal continuance, and finds itself possessed of affections for others and altruistic considerations, so does it become continually less and less egoistic. It is a matter of chopping logic to say that its action is still essentially selfish, if it does good to others, because it is part of its own nature to do good to others, and it does so to satisfy its own egoistic desires. This only proves that egoism is the rule of life, but does not establish it as the rule of Ethics, which is a very different thing. The ethical rule has been found in the course of the enquiry to be, firstly, the body of injunctions which society lays upon the individual; and, secondly, the conscience which a society of subjective individuals cultivates in each separate Ego, both arising from the growth of altruistic sympathy in the subjective organism of which society is composed. To say that when men act ethically they act from egoism is only to include ethical action in a statement of a more general biological law, and takes the mind off from the special ethical study altogether. Ethical egoism pre-supposes ethical feeling in the Ego, otherwise egoistic morality is obliged to frame for itself a hypothetical society of individuals without feelings, which, of course, puts it out of relation with humanity. Egoism, as a basis of morals, is bound to include altruism, or else it is merely a form of expressing the most general law of Biology.