A most important but tolerably late differentiation is the altruistic form of fear—fear, not of others, but for others. Psychic life is at first wholly self-centred, there is no perception of things or interest in them otherwise than as bearing on the experience of the self. Other selves are wholly unrecognised, and pain-giving effects to them are then unperceivable. In very young infants we see a close approximation to primitive selfish life. The exact point in the history of life when altruism is developed by the struggle of existence is not at present determinable, but we may well believe that it arose with the evolution of the sexes in separate individuals. Fear for mate and offspring is obviously an essential advantage in the progress and perpetuation of the kind. Pure altruism is not at first attained, and there is only the faintest gleam of appreciation of pain-states in others, and genuine feeling therefor. The sexual appetite is, like other appetites, purely selfish at first, and the animal fears the loss of what will satisfy in an individualistic way, quite as he fears that food may be taken away or destroyed. Even in higher psychisms much that we readily interpret as altruistic is often mainly personal; it is not a true regard and emotion at pain and injury imminent to others, a manifestation of feeling at their experience as such, but mostly a feeling for their experience only so far as it involves our pleasure-pain. When sociality and interdependence of organisms is attained as a great advantage in the struggle of life, when personal experience is perceived as dependent upon experiences of others, then a feeling value attaches to the experienceable for others, yet selfishly at first. Even parental oversight and care must originally have been selfish—the satisfaction of a personal craving, rather than the promotion of the well-being of another, considered for its own sake. Real and pure altruism must, indeed, be accounted, even in human society, as a rare phenomenon, perfect self-forgetfulness being almost impossible even for the most developed consciousness, owing to the strength and persistence of an indefinite heredity of selfishness. Fear for others is, then, in truth, merely an indirect fear for ourselves; and particularly so is this true in all lower consciousness. But we must acknowledge that elements of real altruism do enter and do grow in value and strength in the evolution of consciousness, and we must, if we adhere strictly to the principle of personal advantage as determining evolution, find a reason here for a singular and seemingly incompatible manifestation. Regard for the good of others is not always indirectly regard for personal good, and self-sacrifice is certainly an element in psychic life, even in lower consciousness, where we often seem to see a distinct struggle between egoistic fear and altruistic fear, as in animals protecting their young. But we see the same in an animal defending food from being