Footnote 178: “The Australians attribute the death of their friends to spells cast by some neighbouring tribe; for this reason they consider it a sacred obligation to avenge the death of a relative by killing a member of the tribe in question. A native having lost one of his wives, announced his intention of going to kill a woman belonging to a distant tribe. The magistrate told him that if he committed this act, he would be confined in prison for the rest of his life. He therefore did not start on his journey; but, month by month, he wasted away: remorse preyed on his mind, he could neither sleep nor eat; the ghost of his wife haunted him, reproaching him with his negligence. One day he disappeared; a year later he came back, having accomplished his duty” (Guyau, _Esquisse d’une Morale_, etc., p. 109). Here we have an example of instinctive morality and rational immorality. It should be noted that in this work Guyau has returned to the view of the moral instinct, adopted by him, after having previously criticised it, in his _Morale Anglaise_ (III. chap. iv.). ----- These characteristics being determined, let us follow the progress of its evolution. It presents two aspects: first, the positive, corresponding to the genesis of the beneficent feelings, or active altruism, an internal evolution—_i.e._, one of the primary feeling, in and through itself; secondly, negative, corresponding to the rise of the sense of justice, an external evolution—_i.e._, one produced under the pressure of conditions of existence and coercive means. I. We include under the name of beneficence, or active altruism, such feelings as benevolence, generosity, devotion, charity, pity, etc.; in short, those foreign or contrary to the instinct of individual self-preservation. Their fundamental conditions are two psychological facts already studied: 1. Sympathy, in the etymological sense, _i.e._, an emotional unison, the possibility of feeling with another, and like him. Could a society be based on this state alone? In extreme cases this might happen; but such a society would be transitory, precarious, unstable: we have found similar examples in the gregarious state, animal or human. Stability requires stronger ties, that is to say, moral ones. 2. The altruistic tendency, or tender emotion, which exists in all men, except in those to be referred to at the end of this chapter. It belongs to our constitution, as much as the fact of having two eyes or a stomach. Now the question put to us is this: How is active altruism developed, and by what psychological mechanism? How do disinterested feelings arise from primitive egoism? Setting aside all metaphysical solutions, such as Schopenhauer’s theory of universal pity, compassion (_Mitleid_) for all beings, founded on a vague consciousness of community of being and identity of origin—a monistic conception,—I shall confine myself to a strictly psychological explanation.