of motherhood. Does a mother really act unreasonably and against her true interest in the sacrifices she is said to make for her children? Only when a narrow and a false view of her interterest is taken. Certain suffering is undergone by her for the good of others, but in so far as she has exercised a choice, this good of her children is identified with her own good, or, as we say, "she finds her happiness in the happiness of others." The sacrifice is but a purchase of certain higher interests at the expense of lower interests, an adjustment in the true interests of the reasonable self.
The antagonism which Mr. Kidd posits between the individual and race implies a conception of society as a mere aggregate of absolutely severed selves, ignoring the common life or treating it as something separate from the life of the individuals and requiring a separate provision for its sustenance.
The fallacy lies in Mr. Kidd's conception of the struggle for existence. The struggle for the life of others is as essential a part as the struggle for one's own life — and what is more the sentiments and forces which make for the two are not really separable, because our own life is organically related to the life of others, the family, the generation, the race. Just as the mother does not really sacrifice her own good for the good of others, but seeks her good in the good of others, so it is with the struggle in its wider form. The man who reasonably seeks his own interest will (in a socially efficient race), conform to such rules of conduct as make for the welfare of the race, because such conduct will give him most satisfaction, or, to use the language of a school who mistrust utilitarian language, because such conduct contributes to the realization of his rational self.
Spencer (though failing to explain the moral sanction or the feeling of "ought"), has clearly shown how the altruistic (re-representative), motives may come intooperation and, forming habits, dominate conduct. Mr. Kidd, having carefully excluded certain operative moral forces from his conception of "rational," insists on bringing them in afterward under guise of a supplementary force called religion.
