According to biological ethics, the fundamental obligations of all living things are the same, even though the modes of discharging them may be various. Every individual must lead an efficient personal life by procuring food, but animals differ very much in their alimentary apparatus; among other things they must respire, but some are so simply organized that they do not need elaborate organs like the tufted gills of a crustacean or the lungs of higher vertebrates. Every individual of whatever grade must also provide in some way for the maintenance of the species, but some, like a conger eel, produce enormous numbers of eggs which are left uncared for, while others, like birds, bring forth only a few young, which receive constant attention and protection until they are able to shift for themselves. Nature has no place for even a human community unless individual and racial interests are conserved, so that the greatest duties are definitely formulated--all else is secondary and less essential. Selfish action on the part of every unit is obligatory, but it must always be antecedent to endeavor in the wider interests of the race if the unit is a solitary individual; if it is a member of an association of any grade, then it must serve its fellows in some way. Egoism and altruism are natural essential guides to conduct; neither can safely exclude the other, and their antithesis sets a problem for every organism, which is to work out the proper compromise that will be most satisfactory to nature. The Golden Rule is taught by biology because it is demonstrated empirically, and not because it has any _a priori_ value as an ideal ethical principle.
But utilitarian or natural ethics need not stop with the statement of vague generalities like the foregoing. In human society, as in the life of low animals, the worth and value of any form of conduct and of every single act can be estimated by definite biological criteria. The institution of marriage and the conventions of common morality have their biological value in their provision for the care of children; the safeguards of property rights enable the industrious--the biologically efficient--to keep the fruits of their labors; the establishment of formal civil and criminal laws is biologically valuable in a social way, in so far as such laws diminish the unsettling effects of personal animosity and the desire to wreak personal vengeance; the establishment and differentiation of legislative, executive, and judicial organs of government lead to greater social solidarity and higher biological efficiency. Thus unchecked individualism is just as wrong ethically and biologically among men as it would be in the case of insect communities, as pointed out in the preceding chapter; no one has a right to expect service or deference to personal interest from others if he fails to work for them and for the good of all. It is true that the social structure will stand a great amount of tension, but if this becomes too great, either a readjustment is effected, as when King John was forced by the barons to concede their rights, or else the whole nation suffers, owing to the selfishness of a few. In the war between Russia and Japan, the latter won because the individual soldier merged his individuality in the larger mechanism of the regiment and brigade and army corps, gladly sacrificing his life for the nation represented by the person of its Emperor. The single Russian soldier may have been far superior to a Japanese in muscular strength, and perhaps in arms also, but selfishness and greed on the part of many who were responsible for the organization and equipment of the Russian armies rendered the whole fighting machine less coherent and therefore less efficient than that of the Japanese.