In proportion as physical characteristics become of less importance, mental and moral qualities will have an increasing importance to the well-being of the race. Capacity for acting in concert, for protection of food and shelter; sympathy, which leads all in turn to assist each other; the sense of right, which checks depredation upon our fellows ... all qualities that from earliest appearance must have been for the benefit of each community, and would therefore have become objects of natural selection.

Behaviors benefiting the community benefited the species.

If life is good, to sacrifice it is a loss to those who do so in order to save the lives of others. But will life be good for those who accept the sacrifice and retain their life at the price of the death of others ? How is altruism possible without egotism? Those who sacrifice their lives are altruists, but what are those who accept this sacrifice? If, however, life is not a blessing, then those who sacrifice it are neither making a sacrifice nor committing any meritorious act. If knowledge is divorced from action as it is in class knowledge, learned knowledge, then the instinctive, by becoming conscious, leads to destruction. If morality is an instinct which motivates the sacrifice of the individual for the sake of the species. Spencer argues, it will disintegrate by discovering its origin. If, however, morality is the love of the begotten for those who have given them life, then the consciousness of their origin, which is linked to the death of the parents, instead of stopping short at knowledge, will become the task of resuscitation.