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Altruism & Altruistic
Love:
Science, Philosophy, &
Religion in Dialogue

STEPHEN G. POST, et al.,

Editors

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

Altruism & Altruistic Love
This page intentionally left blank
Altruism & Altruistic Love
Science, Philosophy, & Religion
in Dialogue

Edited by

 . 
 . 
 . 
 . 

1
2002
3
Oxford New York
Athens Auckland Bangkok Bogotá Buenos Aires Cape Town
Chennai Dar es Salaam Delhi Florence Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi
Kolkata Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai Nairobi
Paris São Paulo Shanghai Singapore Taipei Tokyo Toronto Warsaw
and associated companies in
Berlin Ibadan

Copyright © 2002 by Oxford University Press

Published by Oxford University Press, Inc.
198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016
Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without the prior permission of Oxford University Press.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Altruism and altruistic love : science, philosophy, and religion in dialogue /
edited by Stephen G. Post . . . [et al.].
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 0-19-514358-2
1. Altruism.
I. Post, Stephen Garrard, 1951–.
BJ1474 .A472 2001
171'.8—dc21 00-068140

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Printed in the United States of America

on acid-free paper
 preface

Robert Frost once wrote, “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.” We would
like to thank the John Templeton Foundation for the courage and vision to engage
such a wide group of scholars from various disciplines on the topics of altruism,
love, empathy, and compassion in a dialogue that overcomes walls of division. Its
financial support made possible an initial conference, titled “Empathy, Altruism
and Agape: Perspectives on Love in Science and Religion,” in October 1999. The
task of chapter preparation and editing took place over the course of the following
year, involving further efforts at integration of the sciences and humanities. This
further evolution was also made possible with support from the foundation.
Abundant gratitude goes to Sir John Templeton for his belief that love and altru-
ism are at the core of “ultimate reality” and human nature and for his willingness
to commit funds to allow the scholarly community to explore the scientific, psy-
chological, and theological dimensions of love. His enthusiasm encouraged Dr.
John M. Templeton Jr. and Charles L. Harper Jr. to build on this core belief by pro-
posing the project that gave rise to this book. Judith Marchand, Allyson McHugh,
and the entire foundation staff are also commended for facilitating the work so
positively. The challenge presented by the John Templeton Foundation has planted
the seeds for subsequent research and scholarship at this union of disciplines.
We thank the Fetzer Institute for its support and commitment to this project
and to the fields of study touched by this book and the late John Fetzer for his will-
ingness to initiate a nonprofit foundation that has the bold intention to be based
on unconditional love. Fetzer’s public financial commitment to pursue this area of
study provides an opportunity to bridge various perspectives and to build a deeper
vi 

understanding of these complex topics with research that can be effectively trans-
lated into action.
Thanks also to Greg Fricchione, Lawrence Sullivan, and David G. Myers and
again to Charles L. Harper Jr. for joining our extended planning committee as it
sought to identify scholars who could best contribute to the project. We are also
deeply appreciative of those practitioners of altruism and altruistic love who con-
tributed to the initial conference, thereby providing scholars with a sense of lived
altruism. These practioners include Dame Cicely Saunders, originator of the mod-
ern hospice movement; Reverend Eugene Rivers of Ella J. Baker House in Boston;
and Joan Eads, zone coordinator of L’Arche USA.
This project was supported, in part, by grants to Jeffrey Schloss from West-
mont College and the Discovery Institute that allowed him to devote his energy
and talents to it.
Finally, thanks to the Center for Biomedical Ethics of the School of Medicine
at Case Western Reserve University for providing necessary materials and allowing
time for the overall facilitation of the editorial endeavor by Stephen G. Post, and to
the Institute for Research on Unlimited Love, of which Post is president.

Cleveland S. G. P.
Kalamazoo L. G. U.
Santa Barbara J. P. S.
Palo Alto W. B. H.
November 2001
 contents

Contributors, xi
General Introduction, 3
Stephen G. Post, Lynn G. Underwood, Jeffrey P. Schloss,
and William B. Hurlbut

 : 
Introduction to Part I, 15
Stephen G. Post
1. The ABCs of Altruism, 17
Elliott Sober
2. Pythagorean Bodies and the Body of Altruism, 29
Edith Wyschogrod
3. Morality, Altruism, and Love, 40
Jerome Kagan
4. The Tradition of Agape, 51
Stephen G. Post
Conclusion to Part I, 65
Stephen G. Post

 :    

Introduction to Part II
Lynn G. Underwood, 69
5. The Human Experience of Compassionate Love: Conceptual Mapping
and Data from Selected Studies, 72
Lynn G. Underwood
6. Addressing the Altruism Question Experimentally, 89
C. Daniel Batson
7. Explicating Altruism, 106
Kristen Renwick Monroe
8. Extraordinary Acts of Ordinary People: Faces of Heroism
and Altruism, 123
Samuel P. Oliner
Conclusion to Part II, 140
Lynn G. Underwood
viii 

 .  

Introduction to Part III, 145
Jeffrey P. Schloss
19. A Darwinian Naturalist’s Perspective on Altruism, 151
Michael Ruse
10. Relating Self, Others, and Sacrifice in the Ordering of Love, 168
Stephen J. Pope
11. The Fall and Rise and Fall and Rise and Fall and Rise of Altruism in
Evolutionary Biology, 182
David Sloan Wilson and Elliott Sober
12. Some Obstacles to Altruism, 192
Melvin Konner
13. Emerging Accounts of Altruism: “Love Creation’s Final Law”?, 212
Jeffrey P. Schloss
Conclusion to Part III, 243
Jeffrey P. Schloss

 :    

Introduction to Part IV, 249
William B. Hurlbut
14. Implications for the Neurobiology of Love, 254
Thomas R. Insel
15. A Note on the Neurobiology of Emotions, 264
Antonio R. Damasio
16. Impairment of Interpersonal Social Behavior Caused by
Acquired Brain Damage, 272
Hanna Damasio
17. The Communication of Emotions and the Possibility of
Empathy in Animals, 284
Stephanie D. Preston and Frans B. M. de Waal
18. Empathy, Evolution, and Altruism, 309
William B. Hurlbut
Conclusion to Part IV, 328
William B. Hurlbut

 : 
Introduction to Part V, 333
Stephen G. Post
19. Science and Religion on the Nature of Love, 335
Don S. Browning
20. Separation, Attachment, and Altruistic Love: The Evolutionary
Basis for Medical Caring, 346
Gregory L. Fricchione
 ix

21. Compassion out of Wisdom: Buddhist Perspectives from the Past

toward the Human Future, 362
Ruben L. F. Habito
Conclusion to Part V, 376
Stephen G. Post

Concluding Summary: Future Research Needs on Altruism and

Altruistic Love, 379
Stephen G. Post and Lynn G. Underwood
Annotated Bibliography: Research on Personality and Individual
Differences in Altruism, 387
Shelley Dean Kilpatrick and Michael E. McCullough

References, 475
List of Articles by Subject, 485
Index, 491
This page intentionally left blank
 contributors

.   is a social psychologist and professor of psychology at the Uni-

versity of Kansas. He has conducted a number of experiments on empathy and
altruism (some funded by the National Science Foundation), is the author of The
Altruism Question: Toward a Social-Psychological Answer (1991), and is coauthor
(with Patricia Schoenrade and Larry Ventis) of Religion and the Individual: A
Social-Psychological Perspective (Oxford University Press, 1993).

 .  is Alexander Campbell Professor of Religious Ethics and the

Social Sciences at the University of Chicago Divinity School. He is the principal
investigator of the Religion, Culture, and Family Project, financed by a grant from
the Lilly Endowment, that resulted in the publication of an 11-book series on var-
ious topics pertaining to the contemporary debate on the family. His writings on
psychology, Christianity, and images of human fulfillment span four decades.

 .  is Van Allen Distinguished Professor and head of the De-
partment of Neurology at the University of Iowa and adjunct professor at the Salk
Institute in La Jolla, California.
Damasio’s work has focused on elucidating critical problems in the funda-
mental neuroscience of mind and behavior at the level of large-scale systems in
humans, although his investigations have also encompassed Parkinsonism and
Alzheimer’s disease. His contributions have had a major influence on our under-
standing of the neural basis of decision making, emotion, language, and memory.
xi
xii 

Antonio Damasio’s book Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human
Brain (1994) has been published in more than 20 countries. His new book is The
Feeling of What Happens: Body, Emotion, and the Making of Consciousness (1999).

  is Distinguished University of Iowa Professor of Neurology and

director of the Laboratory of Human Neuroanatomy and Neuroimaging at the
University of Iowa College of Medicine, and adjunct professor at the Salk Institute
for Biological Studies.
The book she authored on her early lesion analysis techniques (Lesion Analy-
sis in Neuropsychology, published by Oxford University Press) was named “out-
standing book” in bio- and medical sciences by the Association of American Pub-
lishers (1989), has been translated into Japanese, and is used worldwide. Her book
Human Brain Anatomy in Computerized Images (Oxford University Press, 1995) is
the first brain atlas entirely based on computer reconstructions of living human
brains. In 1992 she shared the Pessoa Prize with Antonio Damasio. In 1995 she was
elected to the American Neurological Association and became a Grand Official of
the Order of Santiago da Espada (a Portuguese merit order that distinguishes
achievements in the sciences). In 1997 she was elected a fellow of the American
Academy of Arts and Sciences.

 . .   was trained as a zoologist and ethologist in the European tra-
dition at three Dutch universities (Nijmegen, Groningen, Utrecht), resulting in a
Ph.D. in biology from the University of Utrecht, in 1977. His dissertation research
concerned aggressive behavior and alliance formation in macaques. In 1975, a 6-
year project was initiated on the world’s largest captive colony of chimpanzees at
the Arnhem Zoo. Apart from a large number of scientific papers, this work found
its way to the general public in the book Chimpanzee Politics (1982). In 1981, de
Waal accepted a research position at the Wisconsin Regional Primate Research
Center in Madison, Wisconsin. There he began both observational and experi-
mental studies of reconciliation behavior in monkeys. He received the Los Angeles
Times Book Award for Peacemaking among Primates (1989), a popularized account
of 15 years of research on conflict resolution in nonhuman primates. Since the
mid-1980s, de Waal also worked with chimpanzees at the Yerkes Regional Primate
Research Center and with their close relatives, bonobos, at the San Diego Zoo. In
1991, de Waal accepted a joint position in the Psychology Department of Emory
University and at the Yerkes Regional Primate Research Center, both in Atlanta.
His current interests include food sharing, social reciprocity, and conflict resolu-
tion in primates, as well as the origins of morality and justice in human society.
His most recent books, Good Natured (1996) and Bonobo: The Forgotten Ape
(1997), discuss the evolutionary origin of human morality and the implications of
what we know about bonobos for models of human social evolution.

 .  is a physician and associate professor of psychiatry at the

Harvard Medical School. He is also Director of Mental Health at the Carter Cen-
ter. His clinical work has been instrumental in establishing the use of lorazepam as
a first-line treatment for the catatonic syndrome. His research in neuroimmunol-
 xiii

ogy and neuropsychiatry has focused on macrophage-endothelial cell interaction,

with resulting publications in the Journal of Immunology, Immunology Today, En-
docrinology, the American Journal of Hematology, and in various neurology and
psychiatry journals. Recently, he has been studying the important role brain evo-
lution may play in the human spiritual imperative. He is a codirector of the Har-
vard Medical School course on spirituality and medicine.

 . .  is professor of world religions and spirituality at Perkins

School of Theology, Southern Methodist University. He has served as resident Zen
teacher at the Maria Kannon Zen Center, based in Dallas, Texas, since 1990, and
has also been active in the promotion of interreligious dialogue among practition-
ers, as well as academics. Among his publications, Total Liberation: Zen Spiritual-
ity and the Social Dimension (1989) and Healing Breath: Zen Spirituality for a
Wounded Earth (1993) specifically address the question of the cultivation of wis-
dom that flows into a compassion, which in turn grounds engagement in socioe-
cological transformation.

 .  is a physician and lecturer in the Program in Human Biol-

ogy at Stanford University, teaching courses in biomedical ethics. His main areas
of interest involve the ethical issues associated with advancing technology and the
integration of philosophy of biology with Christian theology. He has cotaught
courses with Luca Cavalli-Sforza, director of the Human Genome Diversity Pro-
ject, and with Nobel Laureate Baruch Blumberg. Currently, he teaches upper-divi-
sion courses that include “Adam 2000: Images of Human Life in the Age of Bio-
medical Technology” and “Ethical Issues in the Neurosciences.” He has consulted
with the Center for Security and International Cooperation on a project formu-
lating policy on chemical and biological warfare and with the National Aeronau-
tics and Space Administration (NASA) on projects in astrobiology.

 . , neuroscientist and psychiatrist, is presently director of the

Yerkes Regional Primate Research Center, professor of psychiatry at Emory Uni-
versity School of Medicine, and adjunct professor of psychology at Emory Univer-
sity College of Arts and Sciences. As director of the center, he is responsible for
leadership of a $16 million research institute with 140 scientists involved in pri-
mate studies of infectious diseases, reproductive physiology, cardiovascular func-
tion, neurology, vision, communication, and the biological bases of behavior. As
professor of psychiatry, Insel leads a research team focused on the neurobiology of
complex social behaviors, including parental care, pair bonding, and aggression.
After completing his postgraduate training, Insel joined the intramural program
of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), where he remained for the
subsequent 15 years. At the NIMH, he had two quite independent research careers.
From 1979 until 1984, he initiated and developed the first program for the study
of adults with obsessive-compulsive disorder in the United States. He was the first
U.S. investigator to demonstrate the unique antiobsessional properties of sero-
tonin uptake inhibiting drugs and the first to suggest a serotonin hypothesis of ob-
sessive-compulsive pathophysiology. This work, which was recognized with the
xiv 

A. E. Bennett Award from the Society for Biological Psychiatry in 1986, established
the concept of antiobsessional drugs as a new research area for neuropharmacol-
ogy. He received the Outstanding Service Medal from the U.S. Public Health Ser-
vice (1993) and the Distinguished Alumnus Award from Boston University School
of Medicine (1997) and was asked to give several distinguished lectures in this
country and abroad. Insel joined the faculty of the Emory University School of
Medicine and the Yerkes Regional Primate Research Center in 1994.

  is Starch Professor of Psychology at Harvard University and codi-

rector of the Mind-Brain-Behavior Initiative at Harvard. His research has ad-
dressed cognitive and emotional development in children, with a special concern
for the role of temperament in personality and in understanding of the moral
emotions. His most recent book, Three Seductive Ideas (1998), devotes a chapter
to the unique moral competences of humans and their relation to empathy and
altruism.

  is Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Anthropology and associ-

ate professor of psychiatry and neurology at Emory University. He has held NIMH
and NSF research grants and has been a fellow of the Center for Advanced Study
in the Behavioral Sciences, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation,
the Social Science Research Council, and the Foundations Fund for Research in
Psychiatry.

   is professor of politics and associate director of the

Program in Political Psychology at the University of California at Irvine. She has
taught at Princeton University, New York University, the State University of New
York at Stony Brook, and the University of British Columbia. Monroe’s most re-
cent book is The Heart of Altruism (1996), which was awarded the 1997 Best Book
Award by the American Political Science Association Section in Political Psychol-
ogy and nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. She is the editor of several books, in-
cluding Contemporary Empirical Political Theory (1997) and The Economic Ap-
proach to Politics: A Reassessment of the Theory of Rational Action (1991), and the
author of Presidential Popularity and the Economy (1984).

 .  is professor of sociology at Humboldt State University and the

founder and general director of the Altruistic Personality and Prosocial Behavior
Institute, as well as founding editor of the Humboldt Journal of Social Relations. His
books include Toward a Caring Society: Ideas into Action (coauthored with Pearl
M. Oliner, 1995); Embracing the Other: Philosophical, Psychological, Historical Per-
spectives on Altruism (coedited with Pearl M. Oliner, Lawrence Baron, Lawrence A.
Blum, Dennis L. Krebs, and M. Zuzanna Smolenska, 1992); and The Altruistic Per-
sonality: Rescuers of Jews in Nazi Europe (coauthored with Pearl M. Oliner, 1988).

 .  is associate professor of social ethics and chairperson of the the-
ology department at Boston College in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. He is the au-
thor of The Evolution of Altruism and the Ordering of Love (1994).
 xv

 .  is professor and Associate Director for Educational Programs,

Center for Biomedical Ethics, School of Medicine, Case Western Reserve Univer-
sity. He also serves as a Senior Research Scholar in the Becket Institute at St. Hugh’s
College, Oxford University. In 1995, Post completed his work as associate editor of
the five-volume Encyclopedia of Bioethics with support from the National Science
Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. He is the author of
six books, including The Moral Challenge of Alzheimer Disease (2nd ed., 2000).
Post is also the author of numerous articles and books on the concept of love in
Western religious thought; his articles have appeared in venues such as the Journal
of Religion, the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, and the Journal of the
American Medical Association. Post serves as president of the Institute for Research
on Unlimited Love.

 .  is a doctoral student in behavioral neuroscience in the de-

partment of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley. She works closely
with Frans B. M. de Waal and is collaborating with him in a series of research proj-
ects and publications.

  is Lucyle T. Werkmeister Professor of Philosophy at Florida State

University. He is the author of a number of books, most recently Can a Darwinian
Be a Christian: The Relationship between Science and Religion (2001). A Templeton
Book Award winner, he is a former Guggenheim Fellow, a Killam Fellow, and a fel-
low of the Royal Society of Canada.

 .  received his undergraduate training in philosophy at Univer-

sity of the Pacific and in biology at Wheaton College. He pursued postbaccalaure-
ate training in ecology and evolutionary biology at University of Virginia, Univer-
sity of Michigan, and Washington University, where he received a Ph.D. in 1983.
He has taught at the University of Michigan, Wheaton College, Jaguar Creek Rain-
forest Research Station, and Westmont College, where he is currently professor of
biology. He also serves as Director of Biological Programs for the Christian Envi-
ronmental Association and science consultant for the Christian College Coalition
Faculty Development Program in Faith and Learning. He has been a Danforth Fel-
low, an American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Fellow in
Science Communication, and a fellow of the Discovery Institute. His dual research
interests include ecophysiological adaptions of poikilohydric plants to forest mi-
croclimate and sociobiological theories of human altruism and religious faith.

  is Hans Reichenbach Professor and Henry Vilas Research Profes-
sor of Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where he has taught
since 1974. Sober’s research is mainly in the philosophy of science, particularly in
philosophy of evolutionary biology. His books include The Nature of Selection:
Evolutionary Theory in Philosophical Focus (1984), Reconstructing the Past: Parsi-
mony, Evolution, and Inference (1988), Philosophy of Biology (1993), From a Biolog-
ical Point of View (1995), and, most recently, Unto Others: The Evolution and Psy-
chology of Unselfish Behavior (1998), coauthored with David Sloan Wilson. Sober
xvi 

is currently doing research on the conflict between evolutionism and creationism,

on the concept of scientific testability, and on methodological questions concern-
ing how we go about attributing mental states to nonhuman organisms.

 .  is vice president of the Fetzer Institute, a nonprofit private

foundation, at which she develops collaborative research projects with other or-
ganizations and does program planning, review, and evaluation. She coedited
Measuring Stress, a text intended as a tool to help in study designs examining the
interface between stress and health, published by Oxford University Press. She has
led the development and cosponsorship of various workshops with the National
Institutes of Health, including one on the biobehavioral aspects of pain with 10
NIH Institutes and one on spirituality and aging with the National Institute on
Aging. She also develops Fetzer-sponsored research funding initiatives. Current
research interests include the role of various dimensions of religiousness and spir-
ituality in living with disability.

   is an evolutionary biologist who studies a broad range of

subjects relevant to humans, in addition to nonhuman species. He is best known
for his work on multilevel selection theory, in which altruism and other prosocial
behaviors evolve by benefiting whole groups, despite being selectively disadvanta-
geous within groups. He has published in philosophy, psychology, and anthropol-
ogy journals, in addition to his mainstream biological research. With philosopher
Elliott Sober, he is author of Unto Others: The Evolution and Psychology of Unselfish
Behavior (1998).

  is J. Newton Rayzor Professor of Philosophy and Religious

Thought at Rice University. Her field of specialization is continental philosophy of
religion and ethics. She has been a Guggenheim Fellow (1995–1996), president of
the American Academy of Religion (1992–1993), and a fellow of the National Hu-
manities Center (1981–1982). Her books include An Ethics of Remembering: His-
tory, Heterology, and the Nameless Others (1998), Saints and Postmodernism: Revi-
sioning Moral Philosophy (1990), Spirit in Ashes: Hegel, Heidegger, and Man-Made
Mass Death (1985), and Emmanuel Levinas: The Problem of Ethical Metaphysics, to
be reissued in 2000. She is currently coediting a volume on contemporary ethical
problems such as responsibility in a technological age, globalization, economy,
and moral identity from the perspective of continental thought.

The annotated bibliography was prepared by  . , Ph.D., as-

sociate professor of psychology at Southern Methodist University, and s
 , Ph.D., Department of Pediatrics, UCLA.
Altruism & Altruistic Love
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 General Introduction
S T E P H E N G . P O S T, LY N N G . U N D E RWO O D,
J E F F R E Y P. S C H LO S S , & W I L L I A M B . H U R L B U T

In the context of human behavior, altruism, from the Latin root alter (meaning
“other”), concerns the place of the other in moral experience, especially when the
other is in need. An altruist intends and acts for the other’s sake as an end in itself
rather than as a means to public recognition or internal well-being, although such
benefits to self need not be resisted. In altruism, solipsism, the view that the self is
all that exists or can be known (solus, meaning “alone,” and ipse, meaning “self ”) is
transcended: Self no longer perceives self as the only center of worth and no longer
perceives worth in others only to the extent that they contribute to egoistic inter-
ests. In essence, as one is altruistic, one realizes the independence of others from
his or her use and senses that his or her claims to ontological centrality are illusory.
Altruism, especially when it extends beyond biological relations (kin altru-
ism) and beyond “tit-for-tat” calculations grounded in self-interest (reciprocal al-
truism), is widely lauded and is commonly considered a foundation of moral life,
although it need not imply the total eclipse of self-concern or a quest for self-im-
molation. In its fullest expression, which may include significant self-sacrifice in
the aid of strangers or even enemies, altruism is a source of perennial fascination
across cultures. Regardless of its duration, intensity, emotional engagement, sacri-
fice, and extensivity, the common feature of altruism is affirmation of and care for
“the other as other” (a phrase that seems ubiquitous in contemporary moral phi-
losophy of “alterity,” especially in the context of phenomenology).
3
4  

We use both “altruism” and “altruistic love” in the book title. Biologists use al-
truism to refer to actions that benefit the reproductive success of others at expense
to the self, making no reference to motivation or conscious intentions. Social sci-
entists often focus on psychological altruism in efforts to measure the extent to
which altruistic acts are genuine. In human beings, and perhaps in some other
highly developed species, the possibility of motivational or psychological altruism
seems significant. Human altruism can be minimalist and for the most part emo-
tionally uninvolved, such as the everyday respect for others that is expressed in eti-
quette and adherence to the minimal principle of nonmaleficence. It can become
fuller or more idealistic in its expression, as in the case of efforts to actively assist
others in genuine need.
What is at the very core of human altruistic love, which is altruism grounded
in deep empathic affirmation? Phenomenologist Jules Toner defined love as “affir-
mative affection” (1968). We all know what it feels like to be valued in this way, and
we remember loving persons who conveyed this affective affirmation through
tone of voice, facial expression, a hand on the shoulder in time of grief, and a de-
sire to be with us. This affection is affirming, which is to say that the agent of affir-
mation sees preciousness in us as we are. Altruistic love, which is uniquely human
however much certain of its building blocks might be found in nonhuman species,
is an intentional affirmation of our very being grounded in biologically given
emotional capacities that are elevated by world view (including principles, sym-
bol, and myth) and imitation into the sphere of consistency and abiding loyalty.
As such, altruistic love is the most complex and interesting expression of human
altruism.
Altruistic love is very closely linked to care (cura), which is love in response to
the other in need. Care is the form love takes when it is attentive to the other in
need. Love implies benevolence, care, compassion, and action. Compassion, for
example, is the form love takes in response to suffering; it is a readiness to enter
into the other’s suffering. Justice is the concern of love and care because no indi-
vidual agent can attend to the needs of all and eventually must give attention to the
underlying social and economic inequalities that give rise to need. But the essen-
tial core of love exists prior to these expressions of love. In the words of Irving
Singer, “To love another person is to treat him with great regard, to confer a new
and personal value upon him” (1985, p. 11). Yet those who claim to be persons of
altruistic love and who fail to act on behalf of others insofar as they are able man-
ifest an obvious contradiction, for love implies action.
Altruistic love is a human ideal across most, if not all, religions. One can argue
about the extent to which religions succeed or fail in teaching and implementing a
love idealism that goes beyond insular “tribal” interests. This is in part a matter for
empirical investigation, although at face value it appears that esteemed religious
altruists have accomplished much for all humanity. Desmond Tutu and Abraham
Joshua Heschel, prophets of justice; Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., nonvio-
lent liberators; Bonhoeffer, opponent of Hitler; Dorothy Day, feeder of hungry la-
borers; Eugene Rivers, bringer of peace to inner cities; Dame Cicely Saunders,
giver of new hope to the dying; Jean Vanier, founder of l’Arche; Dag Ham-
marskjöld, seeker of peace in the Congo; and the Dalai Lama of Tibetan Bud-
  5

dhism—these are only a few examples of modern leaders whose deep religious
convictions about love and justice shaped their contributions to public life, polit-
ical change, and human progress.
There is no doubt that numerous entirely secular individuals have achieved
high levels of other-regard, and some authors in this book (for example, Monroe)
do not see religion as a crucial element in the formation of altruistic personalities.
Yet history is also filled with the accomplishments of those who perceived a rela-
tionship with a Supreme Being or Divine Love and who interpreted their altruism
as a direct consequence of this perception. These figures are spiritual cosmopoli-
tans absorbed in other-regarding service. We are sometimes too exclusively inter-
ested in what they do rather than in why they do it, because, as Martin Luther King
Jr. often commented, the “what” depends on the “why.” They do just “happen” to
be deeply spiritual persons. The more we can understand about them, scientifi-
cally and otherwise, the better. We do not suggest that altruistic love in its embrace
of all humanity absolutely requires a spiritual and religious foundation; yet we
cannot ignore the narrative of human history and experience indicating that this
foundation is quite often present, even in modernity. For some, this may suggest
that altruistic love is a cosmic force of some type in which human beings are able
to participate, for example, through “grace.” We are interested in knowing more
about “the inspired apostles of love . . . the great moral teachers of humanity . . .
founders of all genuine religions . . . the true sages, seers, and prophets of practi-
cally all countries, cultures, and periods” (Sorokin, 1954, p. 485).
Where, however, does science come into view with regard to the study of
human altruism and to its most intensive and extensive expression in love for hu-
manity? How does the scientific study of altruistic actions in nonhuman species
pertain to human altruism, if at all? How can we better understand human altru-
istic motivations and actions with a focus on all that these involve evolutionarily,
genetically, developmentally, neurologically, emotionally, and conceptually? It is in
the context of the dialogue between science, philosophy, and spiritual traditions
that this book addresses various views of the roles of altruism and egoism.
It must be stated from the outset that there has been a theoretical trend in so-
cial scientific research, as well as in evolutionary biology, that generates cause for
honest doubt about the very possibility of human altruism in any form. There may
be some possible element of credibility enhancement in this hermeneutics of
doubt. As Robert H. Frank writes, “The flint-eyed researcher fears no greater hu-
miliation than to have called some action altruistic, only to have a more sophisti-
cated colleague later demonstrate that it was self-serving” (1988, p. 21). Yet there is
a body of coherent theory and data that casts some doubt on altruistic motiva-
tions, and this demands serious and balanced attention. The authors in this book
take disparate positions, and we have not attempted to create any false impressions
of unity.
The hermeneutics of doubt is grounded in the difficulty of proving, once and
for all, the existence of psychologically altruistic motivations; such doubt is some-
times a matter of implication, as is the case when all living creatures are under-
stood as conduits for the transmission of “selfish genes.” (There are also those,
known in moral philosophy as ethical egoists, who believe that even if genuine
6  

human altruistic motivations and acts are possible, they should be forbidden in
order to encourage others to stand on their own two feet). Yet the attribution of
“selfishness” to genes—a questionable importation of moral language into the do-
main of DNA—is compatible with authentic altruism on the part of the individ-
ual. As Matt Ridley puts it, “Selfish genes sometimes use selfless individuals to
achieve their ends” (1996, p. 20).
One might ask whether the burden of proof should be placed on those who
believe that human nature contains altruistic capacities alongside egoistic ones or
on those who believe that genuinely altruistic capacities do not exist. Our intent in
this book is to grapple honestly with current scientific questions about the exis-
tence of genuine altruism and to explore the nature of human other-regarding
motives and acts.
This book brings together the work of leading biologists, social scientists,
philosophers, and religion scholars. Although many philosophers and theologians
have waxed eloquent about other-regarding motivations and acts, often with
impressive grounding in the history of ideas, intellectual and practical progress
now rests in the dialogue with scientific knowledge. On the other hand, many
scientists have furthered our understanding of the phenomenon of altruism with-
out nuanced interpretation of the human experience. Our purpose in publishing
this volume is to enhance the dialogue on altruism across fields and disciplines
in order to make progress in understanding and perhaps eventually in practice.
We take to heart Irving Singer’s recommendation in the conclusions to his monu-
mental study of the history of the idea of love; that is, “the most promising oppor-
tunity for us in the twentieth century is to be found in a synthesis of scientific and
humanistic approaches to human affect” (1987, p. 345). Singer adds that although
evolutionary biologists define altruism in a way that “does not necessarily imply
sentiments of benevolence or love” (1987, p. 358), their work does provide a heu-
ristic key into altruism and altruistic love. Similarly, Singer finds value in a closer
examination of how altruism and altruistic love are related to developmental
stages in the human. Our book is consistent with Singer’s signposts for the future,
although we have added the study of the neurology of emotion to the mix.

On the Matter of Altruistic Extensivity

The neo-Darwinian emergence in evolutionary biology of kin altruism and recip-

rocal altruism must be viewed favorably as an antidote to the old social Darwinian
paradigm of the ruthless survival of the fittest. The selfish-gene paradigm allows
for a great deal of altruism toward those recognized as carrying a significant por-
tion of one’s own genes, and the tit-for-tat model of reciprocal altruism allows for
the emergence of a great many social sentiments in human and some nonhuman
animals—including cooperation, sympathy, kindness, and trust. Yet the scope of
altruism is limited by a set of underlying reproductive and self-interested priori-
ties. A perennial ethical and spiritual challenge in human society is how to
broaden the scope of altruism to the extent that all human beings, simply as
human existents, are equally regarded (Outka, 1972).
  7

One of the twentieth century’s pioneer social scientists of altruism was Pi-
trim A. Sorokin, whose work, The Ways and Power of Love (1954), represents the
initial attempt to contextualize concepts of human and divine love within the sci-
entific literature on altruism and egoism. During the 1940s and 1950s, Sorokin
directed the Harvard Research Center in Creative Altruism, which attracted the at-
tention of eminent scholars and practitioners of altruism and altruistic love, both
secular and religious, from around the world. He studied the creative energy of al-
truistic love and the techniques of altruistic transformation embedded in cultural
and religious rights of passage. Sorokin first used the term altruistic love to de-
scribe this particular form of human altruistic behavior, and we therefore are com-
pelled to give him some attention here. Sorokin also coined the term extensivity in
the field of altruistic studies and related it to “intensity” of altruism or “love.”
Sorokin developed an ideal typology of altruism based on large-scale inter-
view and questionnaire studies. He described a set of persons whose love is “very
intense toward a small in-group (their family, their friends, their clique or sect or
faction), but whose love for anybody beyond this little universe is nonexistent. The
extensity of their love is thus very low” (1954, p. 19). Sorokin collected 1,000 cases
of “American Good Neighbors” and analyzed them along the axes of extensity, in-
tensity, duration, motivational purity, and overt action. Among his many useful
conclusions, Sorokin defined the key problematic in altruism as “the tragedy of
tribal altruism,” or the blunt fact that “in-group altruism” inevitably means “out-
group egoism” (p. 459). It was in fact Sorokin who coined the now commonly used
term in-group altruism.
Sorokin stressed the need to move from tribal egoism to universal altruism
and considered in-group altruism, no matter how genuine, as the most serious of
continuing human problems. He described the social dynamics of the common
in-group persecution of those persons who are able to achieve degrees of exten-
sivity beyond group insularity, and he attempted to study those persons in depth
in order to better understand the roots of their exemplary lives. His words are im-
passioned: “An exclusive tribal solidarity—known also as tribal patriotism, tribal
loyalty, and tribal altruism—has mercilessly set man against man, and group
against group. It has killed more human beings and destroyed more cities and vil-
lages than all the epidemics, hurricanes, storms, floods, earthquakes, and volcanic
eruptions taken together. It has brought upon mankind more suffering than any
other catastrophe” (1954, p. 461).
In other words, as contemporary evolutionary psychologists argue, the
human propensity to aid and cooperate with others evolved in the context of
intergroup conflict, and thus the complement of prosocial capacities is the ten-
dency to form exclusionary alliances. The aggressive aspects of human nature had
already been highlighted by presociobiological ethologists such as Konrad
Lorenz. The most significant moral, scientific, and religious challenge that we face
as a species is the overcoming of intergroup conflict. Sorokin suggested that
human beings should turn their hate and aggression against disease, starvation,
poverty, and other assaults on human well-being. If the inevitable correlate of al-
truism is aggression, then is the capacity for empathy potent enough to overcome
the in-group/out-group barrier and to inhibit aggressive tendencies because of
8  

the distress that the empathic observer feels in response to the noxious conse-
quences of aggression (Feshbach & Feshbach, 1986)? Can the symbols that live in
us and in which we live bring us to full equality regarding altruism? Is empathy so
thoroughly the product of in-group evolution that in-group insularity is ineradi-
cable? The question here is not just whether empathy can be extended, that is, if it
is heavily or entirely constrained by in-group evolutionary origins. The further
question is how empathy, which by its very nature is ethically neutral, can be used
as a tool for nurture rather than for exploitative control. Even within groups, as
Joseph Conrad vividly depicts in his novels and as Hitler understood to his politi-
cal advantage, the ability to sense what others are feeling can be used either to pro-
vide sensitive care or to manipulate, even cruelly dominate. Evolutionary debates
over the very origin and significance of empathy—not just its group domain but
its biological function—are crucial, well grounded, and not yet resolved.
The theme of in-group altruism and out-group aggression is central to an-
other significant work on the science of altruism, Elliott Sober’s and David Sloan
Wilson’s Unto Others: The Evolution and Psychology of Unselfish Behavior (1998).
This work is provocative in its critique of both social scientific and evolutionary
biological assumptions that too easily disparage the human capacity for altruism,
with regard to both motivation and action. Yet this work is highly debated by
many of the primary contemporary architects of evolutionary theory. Sober and
Wilson argue that unless the human capacity for altruism is in fact a reality by sci-
entific analysis, there is a certain futility in recommending it, for otherwise in the
final assessment one is only toying with an exalted illusion.
The dominant theory of evolutionary biology looks at acts that increase the
fitness (survival and reproduction) of others at expense to the individual. In this
biological sense, altruism does not imply any conscious benevolence. The conclu-
sion offered by many sociobiologists is that such altruistic acts are all a matter of
either inclusive fitness, such that one’s own genes are passed on through relatives
who also possess said genes, or of reciprocal altruism, from which the self derives
compensatory reproductive benefits. Robert Trivers, George Williams, and John
Maynard Smith are all associated with this perspective. Sober and Wilson, how-
ever, take a different view. They argue for a form of group altruism in which acts
on behalf of other members of the group go beyond kin interests and reciprocity
to the group as a whole. The survival of a group against competitors would make
forms of altruism beyond individual reproductive and survival interests evolu-
tionarily plausible. Sober and Wilson thus argue for “genuinely altruistic traits”
(p. 6). They conclude that “Altruism can be removed from the endangered species
list in both biology and the social sciences” (p. 337). The reader should keep this
debate and its consequences in mind throughout this book and will find that our
authors take different views as they wrestle with it. Group selection remains con-
troversial but has significant defenders beyond Sober and Wilson (Boehm, 1999).
If group selection theory is valid, the problem of aggressive acts against or in-
difference to outsiders becomes even more significant. As Sober and Wilson put it,

In any event, it is worth saying here that our goal in this book is not to paint a rosy pic-
ture of universal benevolence. Group selection does provide a setting in which help-
  9

ing behavior directed at members of one’s own group can evolve; however, it equally
provides a context in which hurting individuals in other groups can be selectively ad-
vantageous. Group selection favors within-group niceness and between-group nasti-
ness. (p. 9)

This is important because, if altruism evolves within groups that compete with
other groups, aggressive behavior toward outsiders, which is fully substantiated
historically and anthropologically, may be difficult to overcome.
We leave further details of the scientific discussion to the specific sections of
our book, although the reader by now has a sense of our broad terrain. Intellectu-
als have long taken sides in the egoism-altruism debate, although in different lan-
guage games. In the Age of Enlightenment, philosophers contrasted benevolence
and sympathy with love of self; theologians contrasted disinterested beneficence
and charity with selfishness. Medieval thinkers contrasted amor concupiscentiae
(self-love) with castus amor (“pure” love). Contemporary Protestant thought con-
trasts eros with agape, whereas psychologists speak of narcissism and its alterna-
tives. Sociologist Auguste Comte (1798–1857) coined the terms altruism and ego-
ism, by which he meant an unselfish desire to live for others in contrast to the
impulse to benefit and gratify the self. The extensive study of altruism and egoism
in the sciences has yet to adequately inform reflection in the humanities, which
have generally tended to ignore scientific data in discussing such phenomena as
compassion, kindness, and love. Similarly, the sciences have much to benefit from
the insights of the humanities into aspects of the phenomena that are possibly be-
yond the reach of science and yet crucial to the overall human and cultural context.
Our task is to better understand the emergence of the capacities for altruistic
actions and for empathic affect and how these contributed to a larger capacity for
love. Setting aside all dualism and reductionism, our task is to better understand
this transposition and genesis from above, within, and below. We have no interest
in Platonic or Cartesian views of the self that bifurcate body and mind/soul,
thereby relegating the scientific study of the neurological, biological, and evolu-
tionary features of human altruism and altruistic love to irrelevancy.

Organization of the Book

We begin this book with a section on the definition of altruism and altruistic love
as these are considered in the sciences and humanities. Part of the difficulty in en-
gaging in significant dialogue across fields is that different disciplines mean differ-
ent things by the same word. All fields of study can make greater progress in
knowledge by conversation across boundaries, although this requires as much
conceptual clarity as possible. Some attention in this section is also given to the
phenomenology of human altruism and altruistic love. We begin with attention to
human experience, bracketing out all heuristic filters, scientific and otherwise, that
might be reductionistic.
The second section takes up the social scientific research into the question of
the reality and nature of altruism and altruistic love, considered both quantitatively
10  

and qualitatively. Social scientists have addressed altruism in a variety of contexts.

Those most relevant to this book address underlying motivations rather than
merely helping actions. This section highlights the disagreement in social science
over the authenticity of other-regarding motivation. The social scientific ap-
proaches represented here examine rescue behavior that may place the agent at
risk. But there is also investigation of daily acts of love, care, and kindness, which
value the other and seem motivated primarily by desire for the good of the other.
The third section of this book takes up the powerful debates within evolu-
tionary biology and evolutionary psychology regarding altruism. To what extent
are all forms of altruism determined and limited in scope by selfish genes, as some
evolutionary biologists would suggest? Is group altruism scientifically valid? If so,
what are the implications of this for human altruism? Can human altruism ever
extend beyond in-groups to out-groups and even to the religious and philosophi-
cal moral ideal of all humanity being equally considered? What scientific explana-
tions are there for genuinely counterreproductive altruistic behavior in various
nonhuman species, and what do these explanations imply for human beings? Are
human acts of radical self-sacrifice for the good of others contrary or consistent
with nature and human nature as understood by evolutionary paradigms? How do
data from the biological sciences compare with those from the social sciences re-
garding the existence of altruistic love at various levels of inclusivity?
The fourth section considers the emotional aspects of altruistic love, focus-
ing on the role of empathy in both humans and nonhumans. A substance dualist
view of the moral agent has historically focused entirely on properties of disem-
bodied mind or soul, dismissing the biology and evolution of empathy and other
affective states that contribute to love. How can empathy be better understood in
its biological context? How does variation in neurobiological capacity for empa-
thy affect cognitive functioning and the ability to act in a loving manner? Why are
some persons more or less empathic than others? What biological processes are at
work that encourage or inhibit the expression of altruistic love? How strong
an influence on behavior is empathy, how much is it used for loving purposes,
and is it a necessary feature of love in humans? What are the biological processes
of attachment and bonding that pertain to empathy? What are the discontinuities
between human and nonhuman capacities that allow for the emergence of a
regard for the other as other? Do humans really have the capacity to practice al-
truistic love, and how do culture and symbol influence this capacity? What are the
implications of altruistic love for a larger view of nature, human nature, and the
universe?
The fifth section takes up altruistic love in its religious contexts but with an
eye toward emerging areas for future study. Attentive to the best science and to
religion pluralistically considered, this volume attempts to establish a framework
for dialogue that will hopefully shape the discussion of altruistic love for some
time to come.
In summary, these are some of the central questions that are at least raised, if
not fully resolved, in this volume. We hope the volume can serve as a springboard
for research into the following questions:
  11

• What are the evolutionary origins and neurological substrates for altruistic
behavior?
• What developmental processes foster or hinder altruistic attitudes and be-
havior in various stages of life from early childhood onward?
• To what extent do human individuals and societies manifest behavior that
is motivationally or consequentially altruistic? What psychological, social,
and cultural factors influence altruism and caring?
• Do spiritual and religious experiences, beliefs, and practices influence altru-
ism?
• How does the giving and receiving of altruistic love interact with personal
well-being and health?
• How can researchers from various disciplines collaborate to enhance this
field of study?
• Overall, is it possible to gain new insights that can be utilized to help people
and their communities to better appreciate the significance and importance
of love and to benefit from its expression as a lived reality?

Finally, let us make a concluding comment about the science-religion dialogue

over evolution and altruism. It is interesting to note that all the axes of theoretical
tension described in the introduction—freedom versus determinism, individual
versus group functionalism, material versus ideational agency, and the essential
selfishness versus the loving competence of human nature—were philosophical
and theological controversies centuries before evolutionary theory entered the
fray. Although it is tempting to ascribe disagreement between scientific and theo-
logical perspectives on these issues to disciplinary conflict, it may reflect more the
inherent and abiding ambiguities of human nature itself. The various disciplines
are engaging common poles of human experience, though with different methods
and metaphors . . . the very thing that may provoke mutual refinement.


Boehm, C. (1999). Hierarchy in the forest: The evolution of egalitarian behavior. Cambridge:
Harvard University Press.
Feshbach, S. F., & Feshbach, N. D. (1986). Aggression and altruism: A personality per-
spective. In C. Zahn-Waxler, E. M. Cummings, & R. Iannotti (Eds.), Altruism and
aggression: Biological and social origins (pp. 189–217). Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press.
Frank, R. H. (1988). Passions within reason: The strategic role of the emotions. New York:
W. W. Norton.
Outka, G. (1972). Agape: An ethical analysis. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Ridley, M. (1996). The origins of virtue: Human instincts and the evolution of cooperation.
London: Penguin.
Singer, I. (1984). The nature of love. Vol. 1: Plato to Luther. 2d ed. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.
12  

Singer, I. (1987). The nature of love. Vol. 3: The Modern World. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.
Sober, E., & Wilson, D. S. (1998). Unto others: The evolution and psychology of unselfish be-
havior. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Sorokin, P. A. (1954). The ways and power of love: Types, factors, and techniques of moral
transformation. Boston: Beacon Press.
Toner, J. (1968). The experience of love. Washington: Corpus Books.
Part I

DEFINITIONS
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 Introduction to Part I
STEPHEN G. POST

Academic disciplines tend to erect walls of separation, developing independent

language games and definitions of terms, and sometimes even contending for su-
premacy in the world of thought. But progress in altruism and altruistic love is too
important to humanity to be slowed by separatism. Nevertheless, disciplines must
have their unique methodologies and heuristic keys. So what is needed is a new
field of altruistic studies, one in which the walls of separation between disciplines
are replaced by low, neighborly fences that encourage conversation, respect, and
collaboration. As Robert Frost wrote, “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.”
A certain acrimony has surrounded the study of altruism, often prompted by
the arrogant assumption that a single discipline could provide the one and only
hermeneutic. Altruism and altruistic love, however, are sufficiently complex so
that, above all, humility is needed. It is unlikely that either of these phenomena
will ever be fully understood by the life sciences, the social sciences, or the
humanities, even if they are in creative conversation rather than walled off from
one another.
In this section, the authors have been asked to do their best to clarify what
they mean by altruism and altruistic love. Elliott Sober, a philosopher of science
whose focus is on evolutionary biology, provides “The ABCs of Altruism,” defining
altruistic behavior as enhancing “the fitness of someone else (the ‘recipient’) at
some cost in fitness to the donor.” The honeybee, for example, to benefit the group,
15
16    

disembowels itself when stinging an intruder. A mindless organism can, in this

sense, be an altruist. Sober then turns to definitions of psychological altruism,
psychological egoism, and psychological hedonism, a subset of egoism. Here he
moves to the human domain of motive and intentionality. His position is plural-
istic in the sense that he recognizes that whatever egoistic inclinations humans
have, there are altruistic ones as well. Sober realizes that this is difficult to prove
once and for all, because it is always possible to assert that even the most altruistic
act is driven by a desire to avoid guilt or to feel good about oneself. Sober ends his
chapter with the suspicion that the popularity of a purely egoistic image of the
human self is shaped by a culture of individualism and competition.
Edith Wyschogrod, an eminent phenomenologist and moral philosopher,
provides a broad definition of human altruism as “an action favoring other indi-
viduals at the expense of the altruist.” All moral experience, she argues, begins in
discovering the other “as an ethical datum that makes a claim upon the self to
engage in other-regarding acts.” She devotes attention to the problem of genetic
reductionism, that is, interpreting human behavior in purely genetic terms. These
are terms that she brilliantly associates with the Pythagorean tradition. In her dis-
course on discovering the other as other (“alterity”), she directly challenges the
idea that ethical life is possible from the vantage point of self-interest, no matter
how enlightened to long-term perspectives. Wyschogrod’s “Pythagorean Bodies
and the Body of Altruism” provides a highly original and rigorous phenomeno-
logical analysis of altruism. The reader benefits not only from her ideas but also
from the exercise of reading an important genre of philosophy.
Jerome Kagan, a leading psychologist of human development, defines altru-
ism as the “helping agent’s awareness of the need of another and the intention to
be of assistance.” Intentionality, rather than actual outcomes, is central to this def-
inition. Kagan, in his “Morality, Altruism, and Love,” is particularly critical of evo-
lutionary biology, which he believes provides ideological support for a culture of
narcissism. He is also highly critical of those who extrapolate from nonhuman
animal models to human behavior. The human being is, Kagan asserts, utterly
unique, emergent from evolution with the gift of a moral sense that includes a
propensity to care for the other, although this propensity can be culturally under-
mined to degrees.
I have reserved my own chapter in this section, “Altruism and Altruistic Love:
The Tradition of Agape,” for an attempt at bringing together the different discipli-
nary languages of altruism in a manner that takes all the relevant disciplines seri-
ously and points toward the meaning of the phenomenon of altruistic love as the
epitome of altruistic intent and behavior in humans. As is the case in Wyscho-
grod’s chapter, this chapter also engages the dialogue between the sciences, philos-
ophy, and religion.
Across all these chapters, the authors share a common conclusion that altru-
istic motivations and actions are humanly possible. Although it remains true that
altruistic motivations are hard to prove absolutely, on which side of the altruism-
egoism debate should the burden of proof be placed?
 1

The ABCs of Altruism

ELLIOT T SOBER

In this chapter, I provide a conceptual map of some of the main questions that
have been posed about altruism. What biologists mean by the term altruism is not
at all the same as what psychologists and ordinary people mean by the term. After
explaining the difference between evolutionary and psychological altruism and
how the latter is related to the concept of love, I focus on the evolutionary concept
and describe how it is possible for the competitive process of natural selection to
lead to the evolution of altruistic traits. Then I turn to the psychological concept
and describe how it is related to, though different from, the concept of morality.

Evolutionary Altruism

A trait is said to be evolutionarily altruistic by virtue of the effects it has on fitness.

An organism’s fitness is its ability to be reproductively successful; an organism’s
survival is relevant to its fitness only to the extent that survival promotes repro-
ductive success. An altruistic behavior is one that enhances the fitness of someone
else (the “recipient”) at some cost in fitness to the donor. Thus a mindless organ-
ism can be an evolutionary altruist. Darwin thought that the barbed stinger of the
honeybee is an altruistic trait—the bee disembowels itself when it stings an in-
truder to the nest; the stinger keeps pumping venom even after the bee has per-
ished, thus conferring a benefit on the group.
17
18 

The puzzle about evolutionary altruism is that it appears to be a trait that

natural selection will stamp out, not promote. If altruists and selfish individuals
live in the same group, altruists will donate fitness benefits to others, whereas self-
ish individuals will not. Altruists may receive benefits from the donations of other
altruists, but so too may selfish individuals be on the receiving end. Altruists thus
create a “public good” (a term from economics) at a cost to themselves; this good
benefits both altruists and selfish individuals alike. It follows that altruists will be
less fit than selfish individuals in the same group. Natural selection is a process that
causes fitter traits to increase in frequency and less fit traits to decline. How, then,
can natural selection explain the existence of evolutionary altruism?
Darwin’s answer was the hypothesis of group selection. Although altruists are
less fit than selfish individuals in the same group, groups of altruists will be fitter
than groups of selfish individuals. Hives that contain bees with stingers will be
more successful than hives whose bees lack stingers. Altruistic traits evolve because
they benefit the group and in spite of the fact that they are deleterious for the in-
dividuals that have them.
Darwin was a “pluralist” about natural selection; he held that some traits
evolve because they are good for the individual, whereas others evolve because they
are good for the group. This pluralism became a standard part of the evolutionary
biology practiced during the decades in which the Modern Synthesis was created
(1930–1960). The idea of group adaptation was often applied uncritically during
this period, but the same can be said of the idea of individual adaptation. This sit-
uation changed in the 1960s, when group selection was vigorously attacked. Its
exile from the subject was hailed as one of twentieth-century biology’s major ad-
vances. Since then, the hypothesis of group selection has been making a comeback;
many biologists now think that group selection is theoretically well grounded and
empirically well supported as the explanation of some (but by no means all) traits,
whereas many others continue to reject it. The dust has not yet settled, but my im-
pression is that multilevel selection theory—the idea that selection processes can
and do occur at all levels of the biological hierarchy—is on its way to becoming a
standard feature of evolutionary thinking (Sober and Wilson, 1998).

Psychological Altruism

In contrast with the concept of evolutionary altruism, psychological altruism is a

property that applies only to individuals who have minds. A honeybee may be an
evolutionary altruist, but it presumably is not a psychological altruist. And if, out
of the goodness of my heart, I encourage you not to have children, my behavior
may be an instance of psychological altruism, but it is not evolutionarily altruistic
(assuming that my action does not enhance your fitness).
Although the concept of psychological altruism gets applied to people and to
actions, the best place to begin is to think of psychological altruism as a property
of motives or desires or preferences. Eve’s desire that Adam have the apple is other-
directed; the proposition that she wants to come true (that Adam has the apple)
mentions another person but not Eve herself. In contrast, Adam’s desire that he
    19

have the apple is self-directed. In addition to purely self-directed and purely other-
directed desires, there are mixed desires, wherein people desire that they and spe-
cific others be related in a certain way; had Eve wanted to share the apple with
Adam, her desire would have been mixed.
An altruistic desire is an other-directed desire in which what one wants is that
another person do well. This may involve your wanting the other person to have
what he or she wants, or it may involve wanting the other person to have what you
think would be good for him or her.
Well-wishing can be nonpaternalistic or paternalistic. Altruistic desires, un-
derstood in this way, obviously exist. The controversy about psychological altru-
ism concerns whether these desires are ultimate or merely instrumental. When we
wish others well, do we ever have this as an end in itself, or do we care about oth-
ers only because we think that how they do will affect our own welfare? The the-
ory known as psychological egoism maintains that all ultimate motives are self-di-
rected. When Eve wants Adam to have the apple, she has this other-directed desire
only because she thinks that his having the apple will provide her with a benefit.
Psychological hedonism is one variety of egoistic theory. Hedonism claims that
the only ultimate motives that people have are the attainment of pleasure and the
avoidance of pain. The only things we care about as ends in themselves are states
of our own consciousness. This special form of egoism is the hardest one to refute.
It is easy enough to see from human behavior that people don’t always try to max-
imize their access to consumer goods. However, even when someone chooses a job
with a lower salary over a job that pays more, the hedonist can say that this choice
was motivated by the desire to feel good and to avoid feeling bad. Indeed, hedo-
nists think they can explain the most harrowing acts of self-sacrifice—for exam-
ple, the soldier in a foxhole who throws himself on a live grenade to save the lives
of his comrades. The soldier supposedly does this because he’d sooner not exist at
all than live with the knowledge that he had allowed his friends to perish. This he-
donistic explanation may sound strained; why not say instead that the soldier
cared more about his friends than he did about his own survival? But that the ex-
planation sounds strained does not mean that it must be false.
Because hedonism is difficult to refute, egoism is also difficult to refute. How-
ever, that does not mean it is true. Human behavior also is consistent with the view
called motivational pluralism; this is the claim that people have both self-directed
and other-directed ultimate aims.
This theory does not assert that there are human actions that are driven by
purely other-directed ultimate desires. Perhaps one consideration that lurks be-
hind everything we do is a concern for self. What pluralism asserts is that some of
our ultimate desires are other-directed. Because actions may be caused by several
desires acting at once, pluralism is best understood as a claim about the character
of our desires, not about the purity of our actions.
It is an interesting fact about our culture that so many people are certain that
egoism is true and that so many others are certain that it is false. A Martian an-
thropologist might find this surprising, in view of the fact that the behavior we ob-
serve in everyday life seems to be consistent with both egoism and pluralism. Our
convictions evidently have outrun the evidence we have at hand. Is the popularity
20 

of egoism due to the fact that we live in a culture that emphasizes individuality and
economic competition? Is the popularity of pluralism due to the fact that people
find it comforting to think that benevolence is an irreducible part of human na-
ture? These questions are as fascinating as they are difficult to answer.

Altruistic Love

Love is an emotion, so it, like psychological altruism, belongs to the realm of the
mental. The honeybee is not a psychological altruist, nor can it be said to sacrifice
its life out of love for its nestmates. Love comes in many varieties; it can be sexual
or platonic, and it can be self-centered or altruistic. Altruistic love, of course, en-
tails an altruistic motive or desire or preference on the part of the lover. However,
the converse does not hold; the existence of an altruistic desire does not entail the
presence of love. When I read about the disasters that happen to strangers far away,
I find myself wanting them to be better off. I wish them well, but I do not find in
my heart the emotion of love. In fact, I don’t detect in myself any emotion at all as
I casually peruse the morning newspaper. Perhaps this introspective impression is
not correct, but it seems perfectly possible to have an unemotional altruistic desire.
What, then, is the extra ingredient that turns an altruistic desire into altruistic
love? This is an instance of a larger question. What is an emotion, and how does it
differ from a mere desire? When I nearly have an automobile accident while driv-
ing my car, I experience fear. I believe that I am in danger, and I want to be safe. But
fear is something more than this belief and this desire. It is a feeling. But what is a
feeling, and what distinguishes one feeling from another? This is a difficult ques-
tion; indeed, it isn’t even clear what the appropriate vocabulary is in which one
should attempt to construct an answer. So let us focus, more modestly, on psycho-
logical altruism. Altruistic motivation is part, if not the whole, of altruistic love.
We know well enough what psychological altruism is and how it differs from evo-
lutionary altruism.

The Prisoners’ Dilemma: Rational Deliberation

Game theory was first invented in mathematical economics (Von Neumann &
Morgenstern, 1944). Only later was it brought within evolutionary theory (May-
nard Smith, 1982). Perhaps the most famous game analyzed in game theory is the
prisoners’ dilemma. After explaining how this game works when it is formulated as
a problem about individual decision making, I show how the problem was refor-
mulated in evolutionary game theory. The solution that is correct in the one con-
text differs from the solution that makes sense in the other (Skyrms, 1994). Un-
derstanding this is the key to seeing what it takes for altruism to evolve.
Suppose that the police arrest you and your accomplice in crime. They take
you into separate rooms and interrogate you separately. If both of you remain
silent, they will have very little evidence against you, and so you can anticipate
being put in jail for only a short period of time, say 3 months. However, the police
    21

tell you that if you provide them with full information and your accomplice re-
mains silent, they’ll let you go free (0 months in jail). They also say that if your ac-
complice tells all, but you remain silent, you’ll go to jail for 9 months. And if both
of you spill the beans, you’ll each go to jail for 6 months. What should you do? You
have two choices (confess or remain silent), and there are four possible situations
you might be in, depending on what you and your accomplice do:

The other person

remains silent confesses
remain silent −3 months −9 months
You
confess −0 months −6 months

I use negative numbers to represent the payoffs you would receive in different cir-
cumstances because I want bigger numbers to represent better outcomes—you
would rather have 0 months in jail than 3, and you would rather have 6 months in
jail than 9.
Given these payoffs, you decide to confess—this action is said to “dominate”
the other, meaning that it is the better action, no matter what the other person
does. Your accomplice is in exactly the same position, so he decides to do the same
thing. Thus, when both players are rational, both end up in jail for 6 months. If
both had behaved irrationally and chosen to remain silent, each would have been
better off, because then each would have gone to jail for only 3 months. In this
case, universal rationality leads to a worse outcome than universal irrationality. In
many situations in real life, we think that being rational helps us obtain better out-
comes. The prisoners’ dilemma seems paradoxical because it shows how this con-
nection between rationality and doing well is not inevitable.
After the prisoners’ dilemma was invented at the RAND Corporation in
1950,1 it was used to model a number of real-world social dilemmas. One of them
was the question of whether the United States should continue to stockpile nuclear
weapons in its cold war arms race with the Soviet Union. Because the model
builders were giving advice to the U.S. government, I represent the payoffs that the
United States would receive in four circumstances:

USSR
disarms arms
disarms Second Best Fourth Best
U.S.
arms Best Third Best

The best outcome for the United States would be for it to arm itself and for the
USSR not to; although armaments cost money, this cost would be more than
compensated for by the power the United States would obtain. The worst out-
come for the United States would be for the United States to disarm and for the
USSR not to, because then the USSR would have power over the United States.
The second and third best outcomes are ones in which the United States and the
22 

USSR do the same thing. It would be better for the United States if both sides dis-
armed than if neither did; this would save money and also reduce the chance of a
devastating nuclear war. Given these payoffs, the United States should arm itself;
the USSR, faced with the same problem, should do the same thing. It would have
been better for both if both had disarmed, but this is not what rational delibera-
tion dictates.
The prisoners’ dilemma also had an impact on the budding environmentalist
movement. Garrett Hardin (1968), in his influential paper “The Tragedy of the
Commons,” describes a hypothetical community of farmers who use a shared par-
cel of land (“the commons”) for grazing. Each farmer can either put the maxi-
mum number of animals out to graze on this commons or put some lesser num-
ber there. Each farmer gets a higher income by using the commons to the utmost;
however, when all the farmers do this, they overexploit the commons and ruin it.
For Hardin, the prisoners’ dilemma distills the essence of how free-market capital-
ism can destroy the environment and make everyone worse off.
With these three examples in mind, let’s extract the abstract structure of the
prisoners’ dilemma game. Remaining silent in the first game is an instance of “co-
operating” with your accomplice. Disarming is an instance of “cooperating” with
the Soviet Union in the second game. And restraining your use of the commons is
a case of “cooperating” with the other farmers in the third. Similarly, confessing to
the police is an instance of “defecting” against your accomplice in the first game,
arming is a case of “defecting” against the Soviet Union in the second, and using
the commons to the maximum is an instance of “defecting” in the third. The terms
cooperate and defect became standard in the game theory literature. They mean ex-
actly the same thing as altruism and selfishness do in evolutionary game theory.
The abstract structure of the payoffs you receive in a prisoners’ dilemma, then, is
as follows:

The other person behaves

altruistically selfishly
altruistically x−c+b x−c
You behave
selfishly x+b x

When you and the other person behave selfishly, no benefits are donated, and none
are received; call the payoff that you receive in this circumstance “x.” If you behave
altruistically and the other person is selfish, you donate a benefit that costs you c to
produce, and you receive nothing in return. So your payoff is (x − c). If you behave
selfishly and the other person behaves altruistically, you receive a benefit, but you
don’t pay the cost of producing a donation, so your payoff is (x + b). Finally, if you
and the other person both behave altruistically, each of you pays the cost of dona-
tion, but each of you also receives a donation from the other person; in this case
your payoff is (x − c + b). As mentioned earlier, a dominance argument entails that
you should be selfish. The same argument leads the other person to choose the
same action. If both players behave selfishly, both do worse than they would have
if both had behaved altruistically; notice that x − c + b > x, if b > c.
    23

Payoffs are supposed to reflect your “utilities.” What are these? As the exam-
ples illustrate, they could be avoiding jail, attaining power and safety, taking in dol-
lars, or anything, as long as the actors prefer more of the quantity over less. Well,
almost anything. Suppose you are in the original prisoners’ dilemma situation and
that you care about what happens both to you and to your accomplice; you care
about these equally. Then your utilities will be as follows:

The other person

remains silent confesses
remain silent −3−3 = −6 months −9−0 = −9 months
You
confess −0−9 = −9 months −6−6 = −12 months

Now a dominance argument tells you to remain silent. If your partner is similarly
motivated, both of you will choose to remain silent, and so you will each go to jail
for only 3 months. This is not a prisoners’ dilemma in the sense in which that term
that has become canonical in game theory, because rational deliberation does not
lead both parties to a solution that is worse than the one they would have obtained
if both had been irrational. Yet the payoffs illustrated describe the situation that
the prisoners would face if their utilities were as described.
This tells us something about what “utility” means in the prisoners’ dilemma
game. The assumption is that a person’s utilities do not reflect any concern for
what happens to the other player. It is not that game theory cannot handle utilities
that reflect self-interest and benevolence simultaneously; after all, the previous
table represents people who care about self and other in equal measure. Rather, my
point is that this notion of utility is banished from formulations of the prisoners’
dilemma.
In fact, the limitation on what utility means in the prisoners’ dilemma is even
more severe. Suppose you are a psychological egoist of the hedonistic variety. All
you care about ultimately is experiencing pleasure and avoiding pain. You are
being interrogated by the police, and you recognize that your pleasure and pain
will be affected in two ways by what transpires. First, going to jail will cause you
pain. But suppose you will find it equally painful to know that your accomplice is
in jail (if he serves n months in jail, this will cause you as much pain as would be
delivered by your spending n months in jail yourself ). In this case, just as in the
case of genuine benevolence, you will choose to remain silent. If your utilities are
as described, then you are not in a prisoners’ dilemma, properly so called. Utility
in the prisoners’ dilemma has to be “crassly egoistic,” not just egoistic.

The Prisoners’ Dilemma: Evolutionary Game Theory

Although rationality leads to universal selfishness when the prisoners’ dilemma is

formulated as a problem about rational deliberation, it turns out that natural se-
lection does not inevitably lead to universal selfishness when the game is trans-
posed to an evolutionary context. Instead of having two players choose how they
24 

will behave, we imagine that there are two types of organism, selfish and altruistic.
Here selfishness and altruism are defined in terms of their fitness effects, not psy-
chologically. A large number of organisms divide into pairs, and the individuals in
a pair interact with each other. The payoffs they receive are in the currency of re-
productive success; those who receive higher payoffs have more babies. Individu-
als are assumed to reproduce asexually; it also is assumed that offspring exactly re-
semble their parents. The next generation therefore may display a mix of altruists
and selfish individuals different from the mix found in the previous generation.
The members of this new generation then form up into pairs and play the game
again. They produce the third generation, and so on.
When this process takes place over many generations, what ultimately hap-
pens to the frequencies of altruism and selfishness? That depends on how pairs are
formed. If individuals pair at random, then selfish individuals will be fitter than al-
truists, and so altruism will decline in frequency and go extinct. However, if like al-
ways pairs with like, then altruists interact exclusively with each other and thus ob-
tain a payoff of (x − c + b), whereas selfish individuals interact exclusively with
each other and thus obtain a payoff of x. If b > c, altruists will be fitter than selfish
individuals, and so altruism will increase in frequency. I have just described two
extreme cases—in which individuals associate randomly and in which like always
pairs with like; in between these two extremes are different degrees of positive as-
sociation. The crucial factor for altruism to evolve is that there be some tendency
for like to associate with like—how strong this tendency needs to be if altruism is
to evolve depends on the values of the costs and benefits involved.2

Cultural and Genetic Evolution

Although biologists modeling the evolution of altruism usually assume that dif-
ferent phenotypes correspond to different genes, this assumption is not needed in
an evolutionary model. If parents transmit their traits to their offspring by teach-
ing, altruism can evolve by cultural evolution. Evolution by natural selection re-
quires a mechanism of inheritance, but the core idea here is just that offspring
resemble their parents. The idea that learning and culture also can provide a
mechanism of inheritance is worth bearing in mind when one considers Darwin’s
hypothesis about how human morality evolved:

It must not be forgotten that although a high standard of morality gives but a slight or
no advantage to each individual man and his children over the other men of the same
tribe, yet that an increase in the number of well-endowed men and advancement in the
standard of morality will certainly give an immense advantage to one tribe over an-
other. There can be no doubt that a tribe including many members who, from possess-
ing in a high degree the spirit of patriotism, fidelity, obedience, courage, and sympathy,
were always ready to aid one another, and to sacrifice themselves for the common good,
would be victorious over most other tribes; and this would be natural selection. At all
times throughout the world tribes have supplanted other tribes; and as morality is one
important element in their success, the standard of morality and the number of well-
endowed men will thus everywhere tend to rise and increase. (Darwin, 1871, p. 166)
    25

As Darwin notes, human history is filled with cases of group competition. To think
of this history within an evolutionary framework, one need not assume that these
cultural differences between groups are due to the fact that people in different cul-
tures have different genes. Even if cultural groups were genetically identical, they
still could differ in their phenotypes and still could faithfully transmit those
phenotypes across the generations. Even if the evolution of altruism in social in-
sects turns out to be an exclusively genetic process, the evolution of altruism
within human beings needs to be understood from the dual perspective of genetic
and cultural change.
In fact, there are two ways in which cultural evolution can depart from the
usual pattern of genetic evolution. To see what these are, consider the following
three types of selection process (Sober, 1993):

Mechanisms of heredity Definitions of fitness

I genes having babies
II learning having babies
III learning having imitators

In Type I processes, genes provide the mechanism of inheritance, and fitness is

measured in terms of biological reproduction. The process of cultural group se-
lection (Boyd & Richerson, 1985) that I just described is of Type II. Learned traits,
no less than traits that are genetically transmitted, can affect the survivorship of
individual people and how reproductively successful they are. In Type III
processes, ideas are transmitted by learning, and they succeed and fail for reasons
that have nothing to do with their impact on the reproductive success of the indi-
viduals who accept them. Here we are recognizing the possibility to which
Dawkins (1976) gave the name “meme.” An example of this type of process is pro-
vided by the drastic reduction in family size that took place at the end of the nine-
teenth century in Europe. The “demographic transition,” as it is called, apparently
involved a trait with lower biological fitness replacing a trait with higher biologi-
cal fitness. Having smaller family size was an attractive idea in spite of its Darwin-
ian disutility. The trait had high cultural fitness, and a Type III process led to its
spread. In saying this, I am not explaining why reduction in family size was sud-
denly an idea whose time had come. Rather, I am simply noting that the process
spread by a Type III process. It is important to recognize that moralities can
change for the same reason. In saying that moralities evolve by a selection process,
we are not limiting ourselves to models of the first two types.

Altruism and Morality

Altruism, whether evolutionary or psychological, frequently strikes people as a

good thing. Because of this, altruism’s dark side needs to be held clearly in view if
we are to understand the moral dimensions of altruism and also its evolutionary
and psychological character.
26 

The process of group selection does not eliminate competition from the evo-
lutionary process but merely transposes it up one level. In group selection, groups
compete with other groups, just as in individual selection, individuals in a group
compete with each other. In The Origin, Darwin (1859) says that he uses the term
struggle for existence to encompass two different types of situations. Two dogs may
fight with each other over a bone, but two plants may each struggle against the
drought. Individual selection will favor the stronger dog in the first case, but it also
will favor the stronger plant in the second. Natural selection does not have to in-
volve individuals actively interfering with each other. In the case of the dogs, one
of them gets the bone only if the other does not; but in the case of the plants, how
well one plant stands up to the sun does not affect how well the other does.3 Ap-
plied to the case of group selection, Darwin’s point means that group selection can
be a process in which groups actively interfere with each other, but it also can be a
process in which groups respond with varying degrees of success to a common en-
vironmental problem.
What does this tell us about the evolution of altruism? An individual who is
an evolutionary altruist benefits the group at cost to the self. Altruists might do-
nate food to members of their own group, or they might burn the crops of other
groups. Either way, they help their own group to do better in the struggle with
other groups. Group selection can promote within-group niceness, but it also can
promote between-group nastiness. It is an obvious fact about nature that the
process of individual selection has left plenty of room for individuals to be nasty
to each other. We should expect no less of group selection—it can lead groups to
be nasty to each other. Group selection doesn’t always lead the lion to lay down
with the lamb; it can lead lions to cooperate with each other to bring down lambs.
There is a similar dark side to psychological altruism. How can a noninstru-
mental concern for the welfare of others be morally bad? The easiest way to see this
is to realize that being nice to someone can involve being nasty to third parties. If
Alan cheats Beth at cards because he wants to give the money to Carol, we may
decide that his dishonesty was altruistically motivated and morally wrong. A
macabre illustration of this point may be found in the training that Nazi concen-
tration camp guards and physicians received. They were told that the revulsion
they might experience in carrying out the Nazi genocide was a cost they should be
willing to pay for the good of the German people (Lifton, 1986). Altruistic moti-
vation can underwrite evil (Sober and Wilson, 1998).
There is another sort of separation that we need to recognize between altru-
ism and morality. Altruistic ultimate desires, if they exist, involve a concern that
this or that individual do well. Perhaps a parent wants her children to do well for
reasons that go beyond her belief that this will redound to her benefit. Indeed, this
desire may be a cognitive state that some of our primate relatives occupy. The
point I am emphasizing is that altruistic concern for specific others is not the same
as the acceptance of a general moral principle. If I want my children to prosper, it
is a separate question from whether I think that all children should be nurtured by
their parents. Moral principles are general and impersonal in what they say. They
do not mention self or specific others but describe what anyone in a generally
characterized situation is permitted or obliged to do. Even if altruistic desires ex-
    27

isted before modern humans evolved, I suspect that abstract moral principles are
a uniquely human achievement.
Most of us recognize this distinction between the specific desires we have and
the general moral principles we accept when we compare catastrophes that hap-
pen to those who are near and dear with similar catastrophes that happen far away
to people we do not know. Our moral principles tell us that the two catastrophes
are equally bad if they caused the same amount of suffering and devastation and
death. However, most of us care about the one more strongly than we care about
the other. Even if we are not wholly indifferent to the distant event, our desire that
the victims receive help is weaker in this case than it is in the one that happens
closer to home. Our desires—including our altruistic desires—sometimes reflect
differences that our moral principles tell us are irrelevant.
This division between altruistic desires and moral principles recurs when we
consider the concept of love. We do sometimes speak of generalized love—love for
humanity or love of all living things—but love is perhaps most familiar when it is
focused on particular individuals. Most of us have loving relationships with only a
small circle of individuals; and even within that circle, our love of some individu-
als is more intense than our love of others. We recognize the possibility that this
circle might be expanded and that the love we feel for those within the circle might
be made more intense. But what is far more difficult to contemplate is the idea that
we might simultaneously greatly expand the circle and love all the individuals in it
equally. A perspectival painting can be enlarged to encompass more of the land-
scape, but it still remains perspectival. Perhaps love, like altruistic desire, obeys a
different logic from that of our ethical principles.
If general ethical principles and specific altruistic desires are distinct in the
way I have suggested, why do human beings have them both? Or, to give this ques-
tion a temporal dimension, if specific altruistic desires were part of the human
phenotype before general ethical principles came along, why did the latter become
part of that phenotype? One possible explanation is the social function that moral
principles serve. Moral principles are devices for encouraging group-beneficial de-
sires and behaviors. Human beings evolved in a social environment; the desires we
have are influenced by that social environment. The morality espoused and en-
forced by our elders is a powerful influence on the type of person we grow up to
be. Moralities will evolve by group selection when they influence the behaviors of
individuals and vary with respect to how much they promote the group-beneficial
character of those behaviors. As noted before, it doesn’t matter whether moralities
are transmitted genetically or culturally for this process to go forward.
The idea just described is that human moralities have fitness consequences,
just like the barbed stinger of the honeybee. This can be true even if moralities are
transmitted by learning and barbed stingers by genes. However, as the previous
discussion of three types of selection process suggests, we need to remember that
moralities can change for purely cultural reasons that have nothing to do either
with genetic transmission or with the effect of moral beliefs on having babies. The
morality accepted within a group (or the mix of moralities that are accepted) can
affect the survivorship and reproductive success of individuals, but ideas have a
way of jumping from head to head for reasons that are orthogonal with the goal of
28 

having babies. A morality has biological effects, but it also has cultural meanings
that can lead it to wax or wane. The phenomenon of human morality needs to be
analyzed from both angles.


1. The abstract structure of the prisoners’ dilemma game was first described by Mer-
rill Flood and Melvin Dresher; Albert Tucker (also at RAND) invented the prisoners’ story
to illustrate the game and thus gave the game its name (Poundstone, 1992).
2. This is true in the “one-shot” prisoners’ dilemma, in which players interact with
each other only once. However, the question is more subtle for the “iterated” prisoners’
dilemma, in which players in a pair interact repeatedly, each time producing an altruistic or
a selfish behavior. As Axelrod’s (1984) simulations show, cooperative strategies (such as tit-
for-tat) can evolve even when pairs are formed at random. However, when this is true, there
still is a correlation between the behaviors produced by individuals, even though the strate-
gies used by the two players are uncorrelated. For an example of what this means, see the
discussion in Sober (1993, pp. 115–117).
3. The dogs are playing a “zero-sum game,” whereas the plants are not (Sober, 1984,
p. 17).


Axelrod, R. (1984). The evolution of cooperation. New York: Basic Books.
Boyd, R., & Richerson, P. (1985). Culture and the evolutionary process. Chicago: University
of Chicago Press.
Darwin, C. (1859). On the origin of species. London: John Murray.
Darwin, C. (1871). The descent of man and selection in connection with sex. London: John
Murray.
Dawkins, R. (1976). The selfish gene. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hardin, G. (1968). The tragedy of the commons. Science, 162, 1243–1248.
Lifton, R. (1986). The Nazi doctors: Medical killing and the psychology of genocide. New
York: Basic Books.
Maynard Smith, J. (1982). Evolution and the theory of games. Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press.
Poundstone, W. (1992). Prisoner’s dilemma: John von Neumann, game theory, and the puz-
zle about the bomb. New York: Doubleday.
Skyrms, B. (1994). Darwin meets the logic of decision: Correlation in evolutionary game
theory. Philosophy of Science, 61, 503–528.
Sober, E. (1984). The nature of selection: Evolutionary theory in philosophical focus. Cam-
bridge: MIT Press.
Sober, E. (1993). Philosophy of biology. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Sober, E., & Wilson, D. (1998). Unto others: The evolution and psychology of unselfish be-
havior. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Von Neumann, J., & Morgenstern, O. (1944). The theory of games in economic behavior.
New York: Wiley.
 2

Pythagorean Bodies and the

Body of Altruism

EDITH WYSCHO GROD

Altruistic behavior may be minimally defined as action favoring other individu-

als at the expense of the altruist. For the evolutionary biologist, the cost and ben-
efit of such behavior may be seen in terms of its usefulness to the survival of the
individual or, alternatively, in light of its reproductive success. These claims can
themselves be seen as undermining the view that genetically programed altruistic
behavior is genuinely other-regarding, as these goals are compatible with the ac-
tion of selfish genes. Moreover, if altruistic behavior is genetically programmed,
whether other-regarding or selfish, it is defined nonsubjectively. It can be argued,
alternatively, that altruism is best understood by inquiring into the subjective
motivations and psychological capacities for acts of self-sacrificial giving. Aspects
of both positions are taken up in a variety of contexts in Parts II and III of this
volume.
I proceed otherwise than by examining the dichotomies of cultural-versus-
genetic or subjective-versus-objective interpretation by proposing a third alterna-
tive, that of ethical meaning that arises in the encounter with another human
being. I maintain that altruism is contingent on relating to the other not as a con-
tent of one’s own consciousness—as a perception of or an emotional response to
the other—but rather as an ethical datum that makes a claim on the self to engage
in other-regarding acts. In this view, the other is not apprehended first through
empathy or sympathy (whether genetically or culturally programmed) in that
29
30 

both of these affects require envisaging the other as another “me” and begin from
my standpoint: “How would it be for me if I were the other?” This is not to say that
empathy and sympathy are not desirable but rather that they presuppose a prior
and irreducible relation to the other.
As defined by common sense, altruism may be seen as endorsing actions that
exceed the limits of what is taken to be one’s duty, whether by the control of con-
trary inclinations and interests or without effort (Urmson, 1958). Thus actions
having the effect but not the purpose of aiding a recipient at the expense of an
agent may count as altruistic. However, I hew to the view that full-fledged altruism
exceeds what can be termed magnanimity or generosity and that authentic altru-
ism is radical other-regarding behavior or alterity-altruism, a term I use to de-
scribe unreservedly placing one’s bodily self and material goods at the disposal of
another or others. Egocentric propensities are shed in the interest of ameliorating
the suffering of the other even before one calculates the other’s needs, in that cal-
culation follows from the prior encounter with the other.
Important to my argument is the claim that differing conceptions of altruism
presuppose differing accounts of the body but that any single account may cut
across the lines of genetic, sociobiological, psychological, and theological interpre-
tations. I shall not engage the question of whether the fine-tuning of the evolu-
tionary process that allowed altruistic behavior to emerge implies that the process
is the result of deliberate design (Polkinghorne, 1996), although the issue remains
one of compelling interest. I hope rather to show that the comprehension of the
body in terms of its genetic code may be compatible with at least one theological
depiction of the body after death but that this view is incompatible with an un-
derstanding of the body required by alterity-altruism.
I consider first the conception of corporeality that is presupposed in the as-
sertion that altruism may be, wholly or in part, genetically programmed. In this
account, the body is an intricate system of coded information that governs its
form, capacities, and behaviors as they are determined by the biochemical mole-
cules that are its genetic building blocks. The body of everyday experience that can
touch or be touched, the body as a haptic field, is dematerialized, dissolved into in-
heritable codes amenable to computational modeling. Because the pre-Socratic
philosopher Pythagoras, who believed that numbers are the elements of all things,
prefigured this interpretation of the body, I shall henceforth refer to the body thus
understood as the Pythagorean body. It is not my aim to contest the demonstrable
utility of genetically coded information in the context of evolutionary biology but
rather to show that the Pythagorean body differs from the sensate body that feels
pain and suffering and that is required by alterity-altruism. As Holmes Rolston III
has pointed out in one of his Gifford Lectures, “Genes are no more capable of
sharing than of being selfish . . . where ‘sharing’ and ‘selfish’ have their deliberated,
moral meaning” (1999, p. 49). To attribute either altruism or selfishness to genes is
to see them as moral agents rather than transmitters of information.
Although theologian John Milbank (1990) does not consider altruism in the
context of genetic programming, he has challenged both the intelligibility and the
desirability of radically self-sacrificial altruism grounded in otherness, contending
that otherness is a vacuous concept and is, in effect, incoherent. Milbank’s princi-
       31

pal charge against radical altruism is that it is contingent on the vulnerability of

the other, which, in turn, depends on the fact that she or he will die. Thus alterity-
altruism cannot be realized, because the mortality of agent and recipient cuts off
continuous and ongoing beneficence to the other. Instead, Milbank insists, ethics
calls for a resurrection body that allows for individual continuity and a joyful
communion with others.
I hope to show that alterity-altruism can escape Milbank’s objections largely
because those objections rest on a misinterpretation of the body as understood in
alterity-altruism. Moreover, I support the (perhaps surprising) claim that the
body of evolutionary biology and Milbank’s account of the resurrection body are
strongly linked in that each substitutes a version of the Pythagorean body for the
body as a sentient field that can experience pain and suffering. Although useful in
the context of evolutionary biology, I hope to pinpoint difficulties inherent in the
theological application of this view.

Pythagorean Bodies: The Individual as Code

As a starting point for understanding the Pythagorean body, it may be useful to

consider a standard formulation of altruism and egoism as seen by evolutionary
biology, that is, in terms of their potential for the enhancement of fitness and their
capacity for replication. Wim J. van der Steen writes: “The terms altruism and ego-
ism . . . are related to fitness in terms of reproductive interests. A behavior is altru-
istic if it increases the fitness of the recipient and decreases the fitness of the or-
ganism exhibiting the behavior. The terms egoism and selfishness represent the
converse relationship” (1999, p. 12). The reduction of fitness to the capacity for
self-replication is seen as intrinsic to the Pythagorean body that I describe.
By interpreting the body as serving reproductive interests, evolutionary biol-
ogy redesigns the body of ordinary experience into the body as coded information.
What is envisaged is not merely that the body in the everyday sense is subject to ge-
netic programming but, more radically, that the relation between the form of the
organism, the phenomenological body, can be severed from what counts as the in-
dividual biological entity that is both the agent and recipient of altruistic activity.
Evolutionary biologists will no doubt recognize the position of Richard Dawkins,
who famously refers to the selfishness of genes and who offers no disclaimer to the
assertion he cites of D’Arcy Thompson to the effect that “any animal form can be
transformed into a related form by a mathematical transformation although . . .
the translation may not be a simple one” (Dawkins, 1982, p. 2). Dawkins maintains
that, in his account of this avowedly radical stance (now only somewhat modi-
fied), he is “not trying to convince anyone of the truth of any factual proposition
[but rather opening] a way of looking at new facts and ideas, and a way of asking
new questions about them” (1982, p. 1). The gene’s-eye view of evolution sees evo-
lution as taking place not on behalf of the organism as the indivisible unit of bio-
logical individuality but rather in the interest of the gene, “that little bit of chro-
mosome that lasts for many generations” (Dawkins, 1976, p. 33), so that modes of
inheritance heretofore ascribed to organisms are now attributed to genes.
32 

An organism has manifest characteristics that are the result of the interaction
of genetic makeup and environment, characteristics known as its phenotype.
What is perceived as radical in Dawkins’s description of the phenotype is his ex-
pansion of standard accounts to include not only the organism’s perceptible at-
tributes but also the outcome of gene activity that lies outside the bodies in which
the genes are lodged (1982). Thus an individual entity made up of genes is ex-
tended beyond the organism (whether unicellular or complex) that the genes in-
habit so as to constitute a new individual.
To make sense of this contention, it is crucial to see the centrality of replica-
tion in Dawkins’s account of the gene’s operations: It is in the interest of repro-
ducing itself, the gene, rather than the phenotype, that natural selection takes
place. For Dawkins a replicator is anything of which copies can be made. Informa-
tion bearing DNA molecules, gene strings, are replicators, active when their effects
lead to their being copied, passive when they die out. For Dawkins, the gene is the
“unit of heredity” that is retained in the evolutionary process. Only those likely to
be copied survive, whereas passive replicators become extinct (Dawkins, 1982).
This account is complicit with Dawkins’s famous claim that “the predominant
quality in a successful gene is ruthless selfishness . . . which will give rise to selfish-
ness in individual behavior” (Dawkins, 1976, p. 2). A gene can achieve its goals
through self-sacrificial acts on the part of individual animals, but such putatively
altruistic acts are undertaken in the interest of gene replication.
What remains clear is that although the phenotype continues to be “the all
important instrument of preservation; it is not that which is preserved” (Dawkins,
1976, p. 114) or, as Dawkins also avers more graphically, “a body is the gene’s way
of preserving the genes unaltered” (1976, p. 22). He disclaims the view that gene
selfishness is the way things ought to be and concedes that environmental factors
play a role in determining altruistic behavior. Despite these caveats, the hegemony
of the gene in his account does not support his assertion that gene determinism
can be avoided. Although E. O. Wilson takes a more benevolent view of the direc-
tion of evolution, he nevertheless argues that genes predispose people toward co-
operative behavior. He writes: “Such a process repeated through thousands of gen-
erations inevitably gave birth to the moral sentiments. . . . These instincts are
vividly experienced by every person variously as conscience, self-respect, remorse,
empathy, shame, humility, and moral outrage” (Wilson, 1998, p. 253).
Many evolutionary biologists and psychologists, in conformity with
Dawkins’s general view, argue that even complex human behaviors that involve
cooperation are undertaken in the interest of survival and are genetically an-
chored. In an oft-cited example, I. M. Cosmides and J. Tooby, invoking both com-
putational and genetic models, are reported to appeal to the famous prisoners’
dilemma, a situation invented by game theorists in which alternatives for gaining
freedom are based on the willingness of a pair of prisoners to incriminate one an-
other. One prisoner is offered freedom on the condition that he or she confess and
the other prisoner does not. If one confesses, the nonconfessing prisoner receives
a heavy sentence; if both confess, they receive moderate sentences; and if neither
confesses, sentences will be light. It is obviously in the interest of both not to con-
fess (van der Steen, 1999; Langton, 1996, pp. 82–85). It is concluded on the basis of
       33

experiment that cooperation becomes feasible when rules of detecting cheating

are learned over a series of tries. Acquired in the interest of self-preservation,
genetically anchored rules of prudence determine the outcome (Wyschogrod,
1990).1
What is important is not only the claim that self-preservation may be behind
cooperation but also that if Dawkins’s version of neo-Darwinism is to be believed,
the purpose of replication is neither the perpetuation of the species nor of the in-
dividual organism as the unit of natural selection but rather the conservation of
the active germ replicator. To be sure, difference does not disappear, because each
gene is defined in relation to alternative forms of the gene (the alleles), but the
gene remains the unit of selection. The germ-line replicator is for Dawkins the
“ancestor of an indefinitely long line of descendents” (1982, p. 83). Science fiction
aficionados are likely to recognize that replicants serve to expand power either
through deception, a technique not foreign to intruder genes, or by virtue of a
sheer increase in the number of copies. Although some germ lines may die out,
“any germ line replicator is potentially immortal” (Dawkins, 1982, p. 83). Crucial
for the understanding of the Pythagorean body in the context of evolutionary bi-
ology is the claim that a gene line has no rigid boundaries, that it is potentially im-
mortal, and that the purpose of natural selection is preservation of the gene line.

Whose Life Is It Anyway? Artificial Life

The interpretation of the body as code lends itself readily to the modeling of arti-
ficial life, life that is humanly contrived, through the use of computational proto-
types, thus further attesting the pervasiveness of Pythagorean design. In turning
to computational paradigms for understanding biological life, Christopher Lang-
ton asserts that life is not a property of matter but rather of its organization, for
which computational models are eminently suited, so that now research can be
directed away from “the mechanics of life to the logic of life” (1996, p. 47). It could
be argued that the creation of artificial life would be served most effectively by re-
lying on the organic chemicals of carbon-chain chemistry. Apart from the practi-
cal difficulties inherent in this effort, Langton contends that more can be learned
from the “creation of life in silico” in that it opens up the “space of possible life”
(1996, p. 50).
In essence, what is being sought is the generating of behavior through the cre-
ation of computational automata. The effort to create robotic forms through the
use of available technologies has a long history, including the development of such
humanoid replicas as clockwork automata (Beaune, 1990). By contrast, present
models see the genotype as “a bag of instructions” that specifies behaviors or mod-
ifies structures that are activated through them. It can be concluded that now the
human agent steps out of the picture as breeder and allows the computer to engage
in the process of natural selection (Langton, 1996).
In one well-known simulation system, the Tierra, even the earlier proxies for
the human agent, the algorithmic breeding agents, are eliminated. The computer
programs themselves compete for CPU (computer processing unit) time and
Another random document with
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The Project Gutenberg eBook of Traitor or patriot?
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States
and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no
restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it
under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this
ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the
United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where
you are located before using this eBook.

Title: Traitor or patriot?

A tale of the Rye-House Plot

Author: Mary C. Rowsell

Illustrator: C. O. Murray
Charles Joseph Staniland

Release date: August 14, 2024 [eBook #74255]

Language: English

Original publication: London: Blackie and Son Limited, 1899

Credits: Al Haines

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TRAITOR OR

PATRIOT? ***
[Transcriber's note: The source book had variant page
headers. These have been changed to Sidenotes, positioned
at the paragraph that seemed most pertinent.]
RUMSEY'S GUILT REVEALED TO THE KING—Page 272
 Traitor or Patriot?
A Tale of the Rye-House Plot

BY

MARY C. ROWSELL
Author of "Thorndyke Manor" "The Pedlar and his Dog"
"Fisherman Grim" &c.

ILLUSTRATED BY C, O. MURRAY
AND C. J. STANILAND

BLACKIE AND SON LIMITED

LONDON GLASGOW DUBLIN BOMBAY

PREFACE.

This story is for the most part a romantic rendering of a very obscure
episode in the story of the reign of Charles the Second. It does not pretend
to more historical accuracy than belongs to other romances which are spun
from a thread of fact on a spool of fiction, but it may be mentioned that the
scenes and the actors are mostly real, and it should be remembered that the
story of the Rye-house Plot (1683) as told in authentic records is strangely
vague. That there was a plot—that the King's house at Newmarket was
burnt, or at least that part of it containing the royal apartments was on fire—
and that Charles escaped, are the certain points of the story. The details are
left very much to imagination, and as fancy is free, "one story is good till
another is told."

CONTENTS.

CHAP.

I. "Queen Ruth"
II. How a Mysterious Coal Barge came to the "King's Arms"
III. Maudlin Sweetapple
IV. The Old Rye House
V. How Master Rumbold told Lawrence Lee what the very Air might not
hear
VI. Something in the Water
VII. Mistress Sheppard does not care for her Guests
VIII. Moonrakers
IX. In the Malt-yard
X. The Meeting on the Foot-bridge
XI. "He Died for his King"
XII. Mother Goose's Tales
XIII. The Sliding Panel
XIV. In the Warder's Room
XV. The Plot Thickens
XVI. A Little Difference of Opinion
XVII. "Dead Men tell no Tales"
XVIII. "God Save the King!"
XIX. "Stars and Garters"
XX. "A Friend in Need,"
XXI. "A Friend Indeed"
XXII. Our Sovereign Lord the King
XXIII. "Did you not Know?" she said
XXIV. Lawrence Sleeps on it
XXV. Supper at the "Silver Leopard"
XXVI. "Fire! Fire!"
XXVII. "In the Night all Cats are Gray"
XXVIII. Father and Daughter
XXIX. A Welcome Home
XXX. A Traveller from Newmarket
XXXI. Rumsey meets his Match
XXXII. "So, bring us to our palace; where we'll show
What's yet behind, that's meet you all should know"

ILLUSTRATIONS.

Rumsey's Guilt revealed to the King ... Frontispiece

Ruth and Lawrence succour Sheriff Goodenough

Lawrence Lee encounters Mr. Flippet

Lawrence Lee saves the King

TRAITOR OR PATRIOT?
A TALE OF THE RYE-HOUSE PLOT.

CHAPTER I.

"QUEEN RUTH."

May-day! None of your raw, drizzling, windy, nineteenth-century May-

days, when folks, chilled to their marrow-bones, draw their old cloaks and
coats about them and beg for a cozy blaze in place of the smart new
"ornament for the fire-stove." No; a right-down, unmistakable, fine old
English first of May, with a fine old English sun, gradually assuming
roseate hues, and setting the heavens in a glow as he slopes westward
behind the trees of Epping Forest, casting long shadows athwart the
smooth-shaven grass-plot which carpets the forecourt of a fine old many-
gabled Hertfordshire farm-house; while his dying brilliancy gilds the
broken summits of the ruined gate-house overshadowing it, and illumines
the fresh tints of the cowslips, and earliest summer flower-garlands,
festooned with many a gay ribbon-knot about a May-pole towering to the
cloudless sky. Around this a group of young folks are merrily footing it to
the tune of "Phillida flouts me," which the fifers and fiddlers, mounted on a
table beneath the big spreading yew-tree, are braying out with a will.

Spring-tide. And the Queen of the May? Well, there she is; that—.
But no; what differs more than taste on these points? and
you must decide for yourself concerning the value of her claims on beauty.
To you it may seem that many of those bright eyes, and laughing lips, and
all the rest of it, rival the charms of Queen Ruth, Young Mistress Ruth
Rumbold, the only child of Master Richard Rumbold of the Rye House,
whose embattled gate-tower roof just shows yonder through the trees, with
its gilded vane gleaming in the setting sun-rays. But then you do not know
Ruth as all these good people have known her for fifteen years turned last
Martlemas-tide, when she was left a motherless three months old babe to
the care of Nurse Maudlin—Maudlin Sweetapple. Therefore it is hardly
possible for you to conceive how entirely she has won the affection, even of
creatures commonly reported to be destitute of it; such as Gammer Grip, the
miserly old hunks who lives in the tumble-down hut over against the
crossways, and of Growler and Grab, the Nether Hall watch-dogs and
terrors of the neighbourhood.

The maltster's So possibly it has come to pass, that love has clothed
daughter. little Mistress Ruth about with a beauty strangers might not
be able to see. For you, the gray eyes so frankly meeting
yours from beneath their long dark lashes and the well-defined brows might
be too grave and thoughtful, though indeed, quite to decide, you should wait
till she speaks. The tip of that little nose, to please your classical notions,
ought not possibly to assert its right of way as it does, in just the slightest of
upward directions. Neither is her mouth of the "button-hole" or "two-
cherries-on-one-stalk" order; though it is a handsome, sweet-tempered
mouth enough, with its resolute yet mobile curves when the red lips part to
speak or to smile. Then again, her hair is neither sunny nor raven-black, as
it behoves heroines' hair to be; but then she did not look to be a heroine, this
Hertfordshire maltster's daughter. Nor was it of the tawny red the fine ladies
of those Merry Monarch days delighted to dye their locks; but just of an
ordinary middling shade of brown, with the faint ripple of a natural curl on
her white forehead, and something of the sort which defied the silken
snood, and saucily insisted on straying at pleasure about the nape of her
slender neck. As to her hands, they were as well moulded and serviceable a
little pair as you might wish to see; and if they were a trifle browner than
modish maidens might have considered altogether the thing, the sun, and
the churn, and the delicious home-made bread, and such like things, were
possibly responsible; but an ocean of milk of roses itself, could not have
been so soft and sweet as their touch, if you needed help from them in any
pain or trouble befalling you.

Doubtless as pretty a pair of feet as hers were to be found in the shire;

but if Cinderella's own were smaller—IF they were—they could not have
been prettier; and let her wear what she might, those partial people who
knew her, declared that Ruth Rumbold's clothes always became her. Be that
as it may, very certain it is that that kirtle of flowered chintz looped above
the pink-and-white striped tiffany petticoat marvellously becomes her trim
figure, and matches bravely with the red and snow white hawthorn wreath
crowning her shapely head; and never, declare her loving lieges, was fairer
Queen of May than this Queen Ruth.

The master of Her Majesty's partner in the dance now being so

Nether Hall. spiritedly carried on, is the lord of those May-day revels,
Lawrence Lee, the young master of the Nether Hall farm.
The natural order of the festivities would assign him the distinction; but in
this particular instance it is no empty one. Left to his choosing, he would in
every probability have invited Ruth, queen or no queen, to dance with him,
for the two were fast friends; and such they had been since first Madam
Lee, Lawrence's mother, had gone with her own five-year-old boy toddling
beside her, across the fields to the Rye House; and there, taking the
motherless baby Ruth in her kind arms, she had tenderly kissed the
winsome face; and the little boy saw with wondering awe how some tears
were left shining, bright as dewdrops on daisy flowers, upon the placid
sleeping eyelids as she laid the little creature down again in its cradle. "We
must love her dearly, for she has no mother," murmured Madam Lee; and so
faithfully had Lawrence backed up her proposition from that day forward,
that his affection had gone on growing with his own inches; and if he loved
Ruth when he paddled, a barefooted urchin, along with the ducks about the
reedy shallows of the moat, inveigling her to the like unlawful courses, she
was every whit as dear to him now that he stood a good five feet eleven in
his buff boots.

As handsome a young fellow as you were likely to meet on a long

summer day's journey, with his lithe figure, dark eyes, and crisp locks, was
this young master, now in fact and in right, of the Nether Hall farm and its
broad acres, since he became turned of twenty-one last Shrovetide, as for
quite two years before he had been to all intents and purposes; for his
farming genius was inborn, and he was never happier than when he was
busy among his barns and his hayfields.

A secret. Possibly Lawrence Lee carries his liking for hard work
so far, that holiday-making bores him. At all events, let him
succeed as he may in cheating his guests generally into admiration of his
high spirits, his efforts at gaiety are so exaggerated and fitful that Ruth is
not for an instant to be imposed upon by them. And when at last the dance
is done, and the syllabub is being handed round, and the two stroll away
into the hornbeam maze, which brings you, if you are acquainted with its
mysteries, to the field-path leading straight to the river's brink, the good
folks would stare to see—or can it be the leafy shadows which so heavily
darken those two young faces? Nay; the shadows are from within, as if
black care were busy at their hearts. Yet with a difference; for while
Lawrence's brow is brooding and abstracted, Ruth's eyes are full of wistful
anxiety; and with her little hand tight in his clasp the two silently thread the
maze, until suddenly the fiddles and fifes strike up afresh; and this time
their tune is "Begone Dull Care."

"Let us go back," said Lawrence, breaking from his moody silence into
a laugh of forced merriment, "and enjoy ourselves while we can. Come,
Ruth, one more dance," and he seized her by both hands.

"No," she answered. "I must go, Lawrence; and at once. It will be
almost dark now before I am home, and father will be angry."

On the River Lee's brow fell again; but he only said, "As you will;"
Lea. and they walked on till they reached the river's brink, where
a small boat, newly painted, and decked with ribbon-tied
cowslip and daisy posies, lay moored to a stout stake.

Lawrence's customary mode of transplanting Ruth from dry land to his

little craft, was to catch her light figure in his stalwart arms and seat her in
the stern "before she knew where she was," as she would say with terrific
frowns. To-night, however, he soberly—did she fancy it was even a trifle
absently?—assisted her in with his right hand. That this new order of things
had not escaped her notice, some look in her face made him uncomfortably
conscious.

"Is your majesty well placed?" he asked, affecting to laugh as he took

the sculls and paddled out into mid-stream.

"We should be so," she replied with mock gravity, drawing up the
rudder cords. "Thanks to your lordship's ceremony in seating us."

"That," returned he, breaking into a smile of unfeigned amusement at

her lofty air, "is no more than what is due to your majesty's supreme rank
from your majesty's most loyal subject."

"We find that good hearing," said Queen Ruth, "since we are convinced
that my Lord Lawrence Lee always feels in his heart what his speech
professes."

A troubled Her words were jestingly uttered; but the young man bit
heart. his lip hard; and his cheek grew white, as if some sharp
sudden pain had stung him.

"Lawrence!" cried Ruth, starting and bending forward, "what is the

matter? You are ill."

"Not I, dear heart," replied he, sweeping one hand hurriedly across his
face.

"You are so pale," she insisted.

"Tired," laconically said he, vigorously plying his oars. "With that last
measure, you know," he added in explanatory tones, as she opened her eyes
rather contemptuously.

"For my part," she said, "I am not so delicate, and could have danced on
till daylight again. Though in that case, 'tis clear, I should have had to be
beholden to another partner," she added, with saucy composure.

"Not while I had a leg to stand on," briskly returned he. "But the fact is
—well, I must be getting old, eh Ruth?"
 "A whole quarter of a century. In four years more," interrupted she, with
a ringing laugh.

"And that is ever so far on towards the half of a lifetime," he murmured

thoughtfully to himself, "even supposing one is let live it through in peace.
Well," he added, in a louder key, "'tis certain age brings a peck of cares,
Ruth."

"Tell me some of yours," said she coaxingly, "so that I may share the
burden of them. Shall I not?" she pleaded on in gentle earnest tones.

"Heaven forbid!" fervently ejaculated the young man. "Heaven forbid

you should ever do that, child! There must come never a cloud to darken
little Ruth's days."

Cross- "And yet I think mine can scarce be all sunshine if yours
purposes. are—mind! mind! There you go! Running right into the
mudbank!"

"Then must my steerswoman be to blame," laughed he. "Pull to the

right, Ruth."

"I hate secrets," she pouted, doing as he directed.

"There are some things," rejoined the superior creature, "girls can't
understand."

"Then, to be sure, I think they cannot be good for boys—we crave your
lordship's pardon—MEN we should have said;" and Ruth hemmed a little
correcting cough—"to meddle with; And— There you are again. All in the
osier tangle now!"

"Confound it! and whose fault but yours?" he cried petulantly. "Didn't I
bid you keep to the right?"

"And how am I to see what I'm doing, pray, if you will bob your head
about in that fashion?" retorted she, irately knitting her brows. "Lawrence,
dear, what's your mighty secret?" she added, in honey-sweet tones.
 "Who said I had one?" flashed he. "How stupid and disagreeable you
are to-night, Ruth! What is it you want?"

"Only for you to be nice again. Dear, nice, happy, old Lawrence."

Stillness but "Nice! happy! psha! bah! hang it! A fellow's nowhere
not peace. with you girls if he isn't always up in the seventh heaven!"
grunted Lawrence, and then he rowed on in sulky silence
between the low-lying meadow banks, where the quiet oxen stood plunged
knee-deep in the fresh young buttercup-studded grass, lazily sniffing in the
fragrant evening air, all translucent with the greenish golden tints of
mingled young moon-beams, and the last rays of the setting sun. Save the
low chirp, chirp, twee of the birds settling to their nests among the pollard
willows, and the ripple of the water about the boat's prow, not a sound
broke the stillness, till a somewhat sharp bend of the river brought them in
sight of a wooden bridge, overshadowed to its right by a thicket of tall
beeches and brushwood; while leftwards, a narrow road threaded on across
it to a second bridge, spanning another stream that gleamed gray and still as
glass between straight high-lying banks scarcely twenty yards beyond; and
so winding on, over a waste of level common land, till it was lost in
distance.

Dimly discernible through the copse to the right of the first bridge were
the walls of a quaintly-timbered, many-gabled, two-storied house, whose
latticed casements and trellised porch gleamed in the night's soft radiance;
whilst a huge sign, bearing the royal arms, swung in its carved oaken
framework, which projected from between the windows of the upper storey,
right across the narrow road above the lofty wall of red brick which ran
facing the inn for some distance.

Master Close down on a tiny landing-stage, by the nearer

Rumbold on bridge's foot, a man stood watching the approach of the boat
the watch with his one available eye. The other, blurred and blemished
apparently past all service, aggravated the naturally stern
and sinister expression of features passable and even handsome, to which
his puritanical pot-hat, leathern-belted, black, close-fitting doublet and plain
white linen collar lent no relief. Neither did the knitting of his sombre
brows relax, but rather gathered more heavily, as Lee made fast the boat and
Ruth sprang lightly to the bank.

CHAPTER II.

HOW A MYSTERIOUS COAL BARGE CAME TO

THE "KING'S ARMS."

"You are late, girl," he said gloomily.

"Nay, father," answered Ruth, glancing from his face towards the still
brilliant westward horizon. "'Tis not yet seven o'clock."

"Tush!" he rejoined impatiently. "I'll have no more of these gaddings.

And hark you, young mistress, no more of these vanities neither;" and he
looked as he spoke, in angry contempt at her dainty skirts. "In with you at
once and lay them away. Or better still, cast them into the kitchen fire. And
as for this," he went on, roughly clutching at her hawthorn wreath, and
dragging it from her head, he flung it into the water, "Let that settle it."

A gloomy end Tears of grief and indignation sparkled into Ruth's eyes,
to May-day. as she watched the beautiful flowers whirled by the eddying
tide into deep water; but by a strong effort she restrained
herself, and only said in tones of gentle reproach, "'Twas my crown, father.
They made me Queen of May."

"Queen! crown! forsooth! did they so?" he said, with a bitter smile.
"How is it the very stones do not cry out against this restoring in our
unhappy country of these mummings and pagan holidays? Is it not enough
to be having queens—ay, and kings—of flesh and blood wantoning it at
Whitehall, but we must be seeing modest maidens aping their antics, and
behaving in this fashion?"
 "Nay, Master Rumbold," said Lee, "our people desired to do Ruth an
honour; and I think you should be proud."

"I should be prouder," returned Rumbold, turning irefully on the young

man, "to see her in her winding-sheet, a pale white—Marry! and let me
look at your face now, Mistress," he went on, snatching her roughly by the
chin. "Ha! red as your gaudy flowers there! So! I guessed as much. And
there has been romping, has there?"

"Nay, father; just a little turn or two at Hoodman Blind, and Hunt the
Slipper."

"What next?" said Rumbold groaningly, and turning up his eye.

"And—and a measure," faltered the truthful Ruth.

"Dancing!" and now the stern eye glared.

"Only round—round the Maypole, father."

Rumbold's lips parted with a jerk, as if he was about to break into still
sharper rebuke; but as his eye caught the expression of Lawrence's face he
contented himself with reiterating his dismissal.

"Good night, father," said Ruth, lifting her face to his, but Rumbold did
not, or affected not to see. He was standing absorbed in watching the
approach of a big black coal-laden barge which now hove lumbering in
sight through the middle span of the bridge.

The queen's As the boat cleared into open stream again her huge
crown goes black bows came athwart the poor drowning May garland,
down. and swirled it deep down under water.

Whether the unfortunate wreath's destruction afforded Rumbold special

pleasure, or that some other cause originated the grim smile slowly
breaking on his gloomy lips, who shall say? The look at all events roused
Lee's ire, and he said in tones of indignant reproach, which he seemed at
small pains to conceal, "Your daughter bids you good-night, Master
Rumbold."

The maltster started from his abstraction, and imprinting a cold kiss on
Ruth's upturned brow, waved her away with a gesture of impatience, and
resumed his contemplation of the barge.

Now, in Ruth's eyes coal-laden barges were things as ugly almost as

they were common up and down their little silver Lea; and the rapt interest
her father appeared to be taking in this one and particular specimen of its
class, attracted her wonder and curiosity.

To her the boat seemed only more than a usually hideous one, by reason
of its cruel destruction of her May crown; and partly in search of sympathy,
partly in good-night, she stole a glance at Lawrence Lee. Alack! He had
seemingly forgotten her very existence, so absorbed was he also in
following the course of the barge. "And this," thought Ruth, swallowing
back a rising lump in her throat, was "the end of the delightfullest day she
had ever spent!" Truly, as once she had read somewhere in some dusty fusty
old book, "a merry going out makes a mournful coming in," and she turned
with lagging and sorrowful step up the grassy slope, pausing, however,
within a few yards of the road, which was fringed with a thick growth of
bracken and bramble, to cast one more wistful glance at Lawrence, and to
see whether the odious barge had taken itself out of sight.

Nothing of the sort. There stood the young man with folded arms, and
brows gloomily knit, watching the boat, which was now turning from
midstream. A minute more, and it floated up to a standstill alongside of the
water steps, near the bottom of the inn garden.

Mysterious The willow boughs interlace and hang so heavily over

visitors. the white wooden paling which skirts the garden by the
water's edge, and cast such bewildering shadows in the now
fast gathering darkness, that Ruth cannot be certain of the precise number of
figures all wearing broad-brimmed slouch hats and long black cloaks,
which rise, as she looks, from the depths of the barge, and springing in hot
haste to the bank, as quickly disappear in the direction of the inn yard.
 Two—three—five—seven, and Ruth, despite her chagrins, was
beginning to smile at the vision she has conjured up of Mistress Sheppard's
face when she should see this concourse of barge-men, coal-heavers, or
whatever they might be, besieging her kitchen door. "A scurvy lot, quotha!"
could not Ruth hear her grumbling over it all as plain as if she really spoke?
"A scurvy lot! Each of them, of course, looking for his cup of her home-
brewed cider for their invaluable aid of landing a few coals."

Suddenly the lean, thread-paper body of Mistress Sheppard's husband

showed among the gooseberry bushes, describing, as it neared the steps, the
acute angles which always marked his fashion of welcoming distinguished
guests to his hostelry.

Strange cargo. "Here!" at the same moment said a voice from the barge
in low tones, but of which every syllable was audible to
Ruth through the utter silence around. "Lend a hand, can't you?" and then
rose up another figure, habited like the rest, but with the folds of his mantle
flung far back over his shoulders, leaving his arms free to encompass a load
covered with a large piece of tarry canvas. This man's burden, judging by
his swaying gait, must have been of no light weight, "They're not feathers,"
he growled, as he laboured with it to the broad top of the barge's sides.

"All right!" eagerly said the voice of Rumbold as he advanced to the

steps. "Come along in, quick, Colonel. We'll unload presently."

"That's as you please," returned the other. "But by your leave we'll be
having these under cover at once. They were tempered Venice way; and
your own pretty daughter wouldn't get so much harm from the night dews,
as they would. By the by,—little Mistress Ruth, she is safe indoors and
abed?"

"Ay," sullenly grunted Rumbold. "That's my affair, I doubt, Colonel

Rumsey."

"No offence," returned the other. "I just ventured to ask the question,
because I had a notion that I caught a glimpse of young Farmer Lee's brown
jerkin among the yew trunks yonder as we were clearing the bridge."
 "And what if you did? Isn't he one of us?" said the maltster, casting a
careless glance round.

A startling "True," answered Rumsey, in rather lagging tones. "He's

accident. a necessary evil, as you explained, for the use his premises
may be to us; but I'd as lief he'd been out of the bargain if't
had been possible. He's but a stripling; and old heads are the only ones for
our sort of work, depend upon't. There's what one may call a kind of touch-
and-go slipperiness"— The rest of what the speaker might be having to say
was lost in a deafening clash of steel, while he himself disappeared totally
from Ruth's range of sight, in what seemed a flash of blue lightning.

"Lookye, Colonel!" said Rumbold, when, after a brief interval, he had

succeeded, with Master Sheppard's aid, in hauling Rumsey to his feet again
and landing him safe on the top of the steps. "Half an inch more and you'd
have been under water."

"'Twas those confounded nettles," growled the discomfited Rumsey,

rubbing himself all over, and glaring vindictively behind him at the dank
weed tangle all crushed into greenish mud under his heavy weight, while
Rumbold and Sheppard busied themselves in hastily collecting the scattered
contents of the fallen load. "Have you got them all?"

"Ay, ay," answered Rumbold. "Come along, Colonel. They're waiting

for us."

"There were twelve," said Rumsey.

"Well, well, we can make another search presently," impatiently

returned Rumbold. "There's no fear. The place hereabouts is haunted, the
credulous yokels will tell you; and they'd sooner die than set foot in it after
nightfall. So come. Have with you, Master Sheppard."

And followed by Sheppard the two walked towards the house.

Lawrence Lee And Lawrence? What has been his share in this
hesitates. unexpected scene? Hardly that of an amazed spectator, Ruth
thinks, while she watches the hurried, half-stealthy nod of
recognition bestowed on him by the new-comer, as the three men pass
within a few yards of the spot where he is standing. Gloomily the young
man returns their greeting, but he remains motionless as any stone statue,
making no attempt to join them; and when they have disappeared he casts a
wistful glance at his own little craft, where she lies moored in a fall flood of
moonlight, and sighing so heavily that Ruth can hear the sound of it ever so
distinctly in the silence, for not so much as a leaf is stirring now Then he
turns, and, taking the narrow footpath leading to the front porch of the inn,
is lost in its shadows.

The postern Ruth rose from her hiding-place, listening intently. All
gate. quiet at last; and gathering the tiffany skirts close about her,
she sped like a lapwing through the brushwood towards a
little postern-gate in the red wall, and tapped at it softly.

CHAPTER III.

MAUDLIN SWEETAPPLE.

"Marry! and so here you be at last, child!" said a half-glad, half-chiding,

cracked, treble voice, as a brown withered hand unfastened the door from
within. "Have you seen your father?"

"Let me come in, Maudlin, dear. Quick!" was all Ruth's response as she
hurriedly slipped inside; and then, carefully closing the postern, she seized
Maudlin by the elbow, and dragged her along the gravel path till they stood
under a groined arch, in whose recesses two stout nail-studded oaken doors
faced each other.

Pushing open the one to the right, which stood ajar and yielded at once
to her touch, Ruth lifted a curtain of tapestry hanging on its inner side, and
entered a spacious oak-wainscoted chamber, whose handsome but old-
fashioned and well-worn furniture showed dimly in the light of the log-fire
burning on the hearth.

"Yes," she said, at last answering the old woman's question. "He was
down by the bridge."

"That's well," said Maudlin, heaving a sigh of relief, as she sank into a
big comfortable armed chair beside the hearth, "for he seemed main put
about that you tarried so late. Tho', as I said to him: 'Tis but once in our
lives we're young, Master Rumbold,' I said. And have you had a good time
of it, dear heart? Marry! you've been as blithe as a cricket, I'll warrant; and
Master Lee, did he row thee along home in his boat, lady-bird?"

"Of course he did," replied Ruth, stooping down over the hearth, and
busying herself with mending the fire with the stray bits of smouldering log.

"Of course he did," mimicked Maudlin, her little bead-black eyes

twinkling merrily. "Marry, come up! Hark at that now! And left Madam
Lee, poor lady, to entertain her company as she might! That's what comes o
being Queen o' May. Heigho! When douce King Jamie, as his own Scots
folk used to call him, sat on his gold throne," went on Maudlin, spreading
her withered hands out in the brightening blaze and looking hard into it,
"they made May Queen o' me. Well, well, and Master Lawrence is gone
home again now—eh, child?"

"No," said Ruth, with a slight start. "Oh, yes—I mean no—I mean—that
is, how should I know?"

"How should you know?" echoed Maudlin testily; "because you've got
eyes and ears, I suppose. Is the child gone silly?"

"It's you're silly," retorted Ruth crossly, "asking such stupid questions;"
and then she, too, set to staring moodily into the fire.

"Fretty!" inwardly commented the old nurse, as she stole a cornerwise

glance at Ruth's pale face. "Fretty as any teazle burr. And 'tisn't once in a six
month she's that, poor dear. Tired out; that's what 'tis. As tired out, I'll
warrant, with her bit o' pleasurin' as ever our old Dobbin is with his plough
work, and as ready as he is for his feed o'—What'll you like for supper,
lady-bird?"

"Nothing."

"Eh, naught's a sorry supper indeed. Naught? when there's syllabub

sweet as your own Colley's milk can make it; and the hot-spiced cake"—

"Ah! how you do plague! I'm not a bit hungry. It's been eat, eat, eat, all
day down at the Hall," said Ruth, still half cross, and yet half apologizing
for her most unusual shortcoming.

"Madam Lee is main an' hospitable, to be sure," said Maudlin, "and

likes folks, rich and poor, to be havin' their fill. God bless her!"

"Ay," nodded Ruth, and a faint smile of pleasure flitted across her grave
face.

"And poor old Maudlin," slyly went on the old nurse, "would a'most be
finding it in her heart to be jealous of her, if she wasn't quite sure—"

"Only she is," smiled Ruth, turning and twining her arms round her
friend's neck. Then she drew down the old face, as brown and shrivelled as
any russet apple, and kissed it. "She knows that I love her best in all the
wide, wide world."

"Ay, ay, for sure. Does she now?" contentedly laughed the old woman.
"Well, well, Maudlin'll do to count with maybe. But this junketing's done
thee no good, Ruth," she went on, considering the upturned face with real
anxiety. "You're pale as pale, child."

"Tired just a bit," answered Ruth, again striving to evade Maudlin's

gaze. "Maudlin, dear, Master Sheppard was taking in sea-coal."

"Ay. Yesterday forenoon. I know."

"Nay, to-night. Just now, as I came by."

 "Just now! What nonsense is the child's tongue talking? Sea-coal again,
quotha? when Mistress Sheppard was ratin' of him fast as any mill-clapper
but this very morning only in my hearing, for having more sea-coal in than
the 'King's Arms' can use this side o' Yule-tide, if all the king's horses, and
all the king's men, and the king himself into the bargain, should come an'
put up. An' main and put about is Mistress Sheppard with his craze, as she
calls it. 'Just like men,' says she. 'An' no wonder,' says I, 'for sarteny there's
no denyin' you may have too much o' the best o' God's gifts. And what with
Sheppard's sea-coal extravagance, and what with his oysters—"

"Oysters!" exclaimed Ruth.

"Ay. Nasty slippy things. Two big boatloads o' them's landed within this
se'nnight. 'Travellers,' says Master Sheppard, ''ll swallow as many as you
please to set afore 'em.' 'Maybe. Worse taste theirs,' says Mistress Sheppard.
'But they won't eat the shells, I reckon; and three parts on 'em's just empty
shells, she was tellin' of me; and as she says, says she, 'a groat a year paid
for 'em quarterly 'd be a main sight more'n they're worth.' No, no, ladybird,
you must ha' mistook. Like as not 'twas only the barge comin' to a standstill
by the gate. Got stuck in the mud. The water thereabouts doesn't lie as thick
as a six-pence."

"Will father be in soon, did he say, Maudlin?"

"He bid us not wait up for him; and to lock all but the postern-gate hard
an' fast. He might be late, he said, havin' business to settle across at the
'King's Arms' with some dealers."

"In what?"

"Lord! how inquisitive the child is to-night. In grain, I reckon."

"From where?"

"Bless us! Ay, from Ware, for aught I know. Come, Ruth, an' you won't
touch bit nor sup, let's to bed," and Maudlin rose yawning from her chair,
and crossed with the aid of her stout silver-headed staff to the foot of a
broad oaken staircase at the other end of the apartment. "Ho, you! Barnaby
lad. A light here!" she cried in shrill tones, rapping the end of her stick
vigorously on the bare polished floor. "A light here, I say! Plague seize
Sleepyhead!" she grumbled on, when no response was forthcoming;
"Snorin' away in his owl's roost a'ready, I'll dare swear. Barnaby! Barnaby!"

"Nay," said Ruth, pointing up the staircase, to where the moonbeams

streaming in through the criss-cross mullioned panes, flooded all the length
of a long gallery to almost the clearness of day, "We want no light but that;"
and followed at a more sober pace by Maudlin, she tripped up the stairs
towards a door opening into a circular stone chamber, whose vaulted roof
was supported in its centre by a huge pillar of roughly-hewn stone, graced
about its base with rusty iron rings, and remnants of chain, whilst a
concourse of plethoric-looking sacks lay stacked about the floor, which was
of grayish flags seamed and worn as if by the ceaseless tread of feet,
especially round the pillar.

Icy chill the air struck in this place; and with no little shivering and
shuddering old Maudlin hurried on through it as fast as her rheumatic
twinges permitted. "'Tis a cruel shame!" she muttered, and the observation
was by no means a novel one in her mouth, "that you can't get snug between
the sheets without first catchin' your death o' cold; and havin' your wits all
terrified out o' you with passin' through that gruesome den." Not, however,
till she was well clear of the vaulted chamber, and had gained the corridor
beyond, did Maudlin indulge in the latter part of her running commentary.
"Marry! I come goose-flesh from top to toe when I think of all the poor
souls those walls have seen die an' rot."

"Nay," said Ruth, "but that was only the Debtors' Prison, where the poor
creatures were kept when they couldn't pay their rents and their tithes to the
great lords and barons who used to live here. The state prison—"

"Lord forgive us!" shuddered Maudlin, "and state that poor skeleton
Master Lockit says they found there was in, you may depend. Every bone
rheumatics and lumbago, I doubt Ugh! Yes, I know. It lies down below
water-mark, and opens into the underway that runs to Nether Hall."

"Ah! nonsense, Maudlin," laughed Ruth. "That's an old wives' tale."

 "And what if it be, quotha?" bridled Maudlin. "What if it be? Aren't old
wives' tales as good as young maids' tittle-tattle? I tell thee, child, as sure as
we stand here there's a clear way beneath us; though it may have as many
twists and crinkum crankums, I grant ye, as a half-scotched adder—all the
mile and a half to Nether Hall. But him that's a mind for tryin' o't, 'll find
himself when he's done, in the cellar beneath the ruined tower that's nearest
the Hall, an' turnin', as one may call it, head to tail about, he'll be back again
by the moat dungeon-door, down just under our feet Unless he likes to stop
short by the deep black hole in the wall, which Master Lockit has it—and,
as times go, he's a fair truthbider, though his tales are a'most as long as our
cat's—Master Lockit has it, opens up into your father's sleeping chamber.
But hark ye, Ruth, now don't you be telling young Lee about all that, mind;
or he'll be for tryin' of it There's not a venturesomer harebrain than he in all
the shire, let him once set his mind to a thing."

"I doubt," carelessly smiled Ruth, "he knows the fine tale well enough."

"Tale! Tale again! Well, well, and he's pleased to think it so 'tisn't
Maudlin 'd have him taught better. More by token that there's death in it."

"Death!" echoed Ruth, her smiles fading.

"Choked," answered Maudlin, slowly nodding her head up and down,

"with smoke-damp that'd stifle all the breath out of your body before you
were six yards in."

It was Ruth's turn to shudder. "Well, what does it matter?" she said,
when having closed and bolted the door of the little bedchamber they had
now entered she put her arms round Maudlin's neck and kissed her, "while
there's our darling little river and Lawrence's boat. By the way, Maudlin,
he's christened her the 'Queen Ruth!'"

"Has he now?" delightedly smiled Maudlin. "That's main pretty of him.

Though I doubt Master Rumbold'll be none so pleased. Red rags at a bull's
much the same as talk about kings an' queens to him. He's all for lord
protectors and cattle o' that colour. But never you fear, sweetheart; there'll
be none o' them ever set up while Lawrence Lee's above ground, and he'd
send all the lord protectors ever hatched flyin' before they set foot within a
hundred miles o' Hoddesdon. He's like his father before him, rest his soul;
and all for King Charles."

"You think so?" said Ruth brightly.

"Ay; that's my own blithe ladybird at last," cheerily cried the old
woman. "Sunshine makes pretty maids' eyes sweeter than 'clouds, let me
tell thee. And for the red roses instead o' white ones—hark!" went on the
housekeeper, as the gate tower-clock chimed eight. "There's a long spell o'
beauty sleep to be got yet. So have with thee. Say thy prayers, and then shut
fast thine eyes, and I'll answer for it we'll be having all the red roses back
the morn."

And then returning Ruth's embrace, Maudlin dismissed the young girl to
her chamber, which lay immediately beyond.

CHAPTER IV.

THE OLD RYE HOUSE.

When the Rye House was built, or at least its gate-tower wing of which
we are now speaking, and which was as old as the time of King Henry the
Sixth, probably no dwelling of any importance, with the exception of
Nether Hall, a still more ancient baronial structure, stood within miles of it.

Strong as rocks were its fortified outer walls; and in many parts its
interior walls were three feet thick. This was the case with the old "Debtors'
Prison," lying at the older wing's extreme end, and forming the angle
connecting it with the new wing, which dated only from the time of Queen
Elizabeth. In this debtors' prison Master Rumbold, as we have seen, now
stored his malt. The wall separating Maudlin Sweetapple's little sleeping
chamber from the more spacious one occupied by Ruth, was of at least
equal strength and solidity with the walls of this storing room; but while in
the one case the surface showed the bare hewn stone, polished only by the
hand of time, panellings carved in many a quaint device, and reaching half-
way to the flat oak-timbered ceiling, lined the "Lady's Bower," as time
beyond all count, Ruth's room had been called.

Ruth's bower. Here she held sway undisputed; spending in it hours of

her lonely days when her father was absent from home, as of
late she noted he so frequently had been. So she sat strumming on the
broken and half-stringless virginal, or spelling out the crabbed type of
several worm-eaten books, chiefly poems—long winded, wordy things
enough. Still she cared for them in a fashion; and one volume, whose title-
page set forth that its contents were from the pen of one William
Shakespeare, a play-actor, took her mightily. Line after line she would tell
you of many of the long speeches and odd sayings it contained; though she
kept her studies to herself, for Maudlin had not very much of a turn for
book-learning, and Master Rumbold always said, if it had not been for the
Bible, and that godly person Mr. Foxe's Book of Martyrs, child of his should
not have been taught to read at all. Then as to writing, he was near never
speaking one word more to Madam Lee after one fine day when he made
the frightful discovery that she had been teaching the little girl so
successfully to make pot-hooks and hangers, that long before Lawrence was
out of the alphabet Ruth had been writing on her own responsibility, and in
unmistakeable fair round hand: "Fear God. Honour the King." Wroth indeed
was Master Rumbold over the "fine surprise" thus prepared for him by
instructress and pupil. The knowledge, however, could not be unlearned;
and such a penwoman as Ruth remained till the day of her death you might
go a hundred miles and not find.

And so with her wheel and her tapestry-frame for her father's company,
and her graver accomplishments for the solitude of the Lady's Bower, Ruth
contrived to live as happily as any princess. Solitude is, however, no term to
connect with the spot where the birds sang their sweet music the livelong
day amid the beechen branches which swept the panes of the old painted
oriel window, and the wind sighed gently in the long summer evenings
through the ivy trails and creepers which Ruth trained about its carved
stone-cornices, or in his rougher moods snarled and blustered, like the
tyrant he can be, round the ancient house. But in Ruth's eyes the broad look-
out from that window always wore a beauty, and with all her fifteen years'
experience she had not been able to determine whether that expanse of
lowly undulating meadow-land and winding waters looked loveliest in its
spring and summer garb of green, tented over with cloudless blue, or in
autumn's grays and russets, or clad in its pure white winter snow robe; nor
even whether golden sunlight, or the moon's silvery sheen, as to-night she
stood gazing on it, pleased her best.

Rumbold's Master Rumbold himself slept on the ground-storey, in a

chamber. room immediately beneath his stored malt-sacks. This
chamber, tradition said, contained in its stone flooring a
trap-door opening upon a ladder which conducted into the fearsome
dungeons underground, where prisoners used to be thrust, bidding hope and
the blessed air and daylight farewell for ever. The subject was, however,
one rarely touched upon in the maltster's presence by those who best knew
his humours; for he would either smile in bitter contempt, or—and indeed
that more generally happened—frown angrily; and, let his mood be the one
or the other, always turned the conversation at last with some half-uttered
remark that so might it, or might it not be, and that he had simply occupied
the room ever since he had been master of the place, because it commanded
a watch on both wings of the house. The quaintly timbered walls of the new
wing contained the malting-house; while its gabled roof stretching up stiff
as cat's ears, afforded sleeping accommodation for the domestic servants
and the few workpeople living on the premises.

The malting The handsome guest-chamber, or keeping-room as it

house. was called, was not reserved merely for high days and
holidays, for Richard Rumbold had no liking for such vain
settings apart of time; but was used as the general sitting-room, and
extended from end to end of the ground-storey. Its three windows fronted
the great square smooth-shaven grass-plot, which by tradition and courtesy
was called "the pleasaunce." In the middle stood one solemn big yew-tree,
clipped, beehive-shape, and surmounted by a leafy monstrosity which
Maudlin said was meant for a peacock. Never a flower, however, save the
poor little buttercups and daisies, whose heads were chopped off in a
twinkling, if they did venture to peer forth, ever starred that dreary