potentiality and promise of Human Society through untold future ages. So for age after age those clans in which the conduct of the individuals is best subordinated to the general welfare are sure to prevail over clans in which the subordination is less perfect. As the maternal instinct had been cultivated for thousands of generations before clanship came into existence, so for many succeeding ages of turbulence the patriotic instinct, which prompts to the defence of home, was cultivated under penalty of death. Clans defended by weakly loyal or cowardly warriors were sure to perish. Unflinching bravery and devoted patriotism were virtues necessary to the survival of the community, and were thus preserved until at the dawn of historic times, in the most grandly militant of clan societies, we find the word _virtus_ connoting just these qualities, and no sooner does the fateful gulf yawn open in the forum than a Curtius joyfully leaps into it, that the commonwealth may be preserved from harm. Now the moment a man's voluntary actions are determined by conscious or unconscious reference to a standard outside of himself and his selfish motives, he has entered the world of ethics, he has begun to live in a moral atmosphere. Egoism has ceased to be all in all, and altruism--it is an ugly-sounding word, but seems to be the only one available--altruism has begun to assert its claim to sovereignty. In the earlier and purely animal stages of existence it was right enough for each individual to pursue pleasure and avoid pain; it did not endanger the welfare of the species, but on the contrary it favoured that welfare; in its origin avoidance of pain was the surest safeguard for the perpetuation of life, and with due qualifications that is still the case. But as soon as sociality became established, and Nature's supreme end became the maintenance of the clan organization, the standard for the individual's conduct became shifted, permanently and forever shifted. Limits were interposed at which pleasure must be resigned and pain endured, even certain death encountered, for the sake of the clan; perhaps the individual did not always understand it in that way, but at all events it was for the sake of some rule recognized in the clan, some rule which, as his mother and all his kin had from his earliest childhood inculcated upon him, _ought_ to be obeyed. This conception of ought, of obligation, of duty, of debt to something outside of self, resulted from the shifting of the standard of conduct outside of the individual's self. Once thus externalized, objectivized, the ethical standard demanded homage from the individual. It furnished the rule for a higher life than one dictated by mere selfishness. Speaking after the manner of naturalists, I here use the phrase "higher life" advisedly. It was the kind of life that was conducive to the preservation and further development of the highest form of animate existence that had been attained.