Heinlein, Robert A – Expanded Universe

than it solves. When a man reaches my age or thereabouts, the last great service he

can perform is to die and get out of the way of younger people.

Very well, as individuals we all die. This brings us to the second half of

the question: Does homo sapiens as a breed have to die? The answer is: No, it is not

unavoidable.

We have two situations, mutually exclusive: Mankind surviving, and mankind

extinct. With respect to morality, the second situation is a null class. An extinct

breed has no behavior, moral or otherwise.

Since survival is the sine qua non, I now define “moral behavior” as

“behavior that tends toward survival.” I won’t argue with philosophers or

theologians who choose to use the word “moral” to mean something else, but I do not

think anyone can define “behavior that tends toward extinction” as being “moral”

without stretching the word “moral” all out of shape.

We are now ready to observe the hierarchy of moral behavior from its lowest

level to its highest.

The simplest form of moral behavior occurs when a man or other animal fights

for his own survival. Do not belittle such behavior as being merely selfish. Of

course it is selfish . . . but selfishness is the bedrock on which all moral

behavior starts and it can be immoral only when it conflicts with a higher moral

imperative. An animal so poor in spirit that he won’t even fight on his own behalf

is already an evolutionary dead end; the best he can do for his breed is to crawl

off and die, and not pass on his defective genes.

The next higher level is to work, fight, and sometimes die for your own

immediate family. This is the level at which six pounds of mother cat can be so

fierce that she’ll drive off a police dog. It is the level at which a father takes a

moonlighting job to keep his kids in college-and the level at which a mother or

father dives into a flood to save a drowning child. . . and it is still moral

behavior even when it fails.

The next higher level is to work, fight, and sometimes die for a group

larger than the unit family-an extended family, a herd, a tribe-and take another

look at that baboon on watch; he’s at that moral level. I don’t think baboon

language is complex enough to permit them to discuss such abstract notions as

“morality” or “duty” or “loyalty”-but it is evident that baboons do operate morally

and do exhibit the traits of duty and loyalty; we see them in action. Call it

“instinct” if you like-but remember that assigning a name to a phenomenon does not

explain it.

But that baboon behavior can be explained in evolutionary terms. Evolution

is a process that never stops. Baboons who fail to exhibit moral behavior do not

survive; they wind up as meat for leopards. Every baboon generation has to pass this

examination in moral behavior; those who bilge it don’t have progeny. Perhaps the

old bull of the tribe gives lessons . . . but the leopard decides who graduates-and

there is no appeal from his decision. We don’t have to understand the details to

observe the outcome: Baboons behave morally-for baboons.

The next level in moral behavior higher than that exhibited by the baboon is

that in which duty and loyalty are shown toward a group of your own kind too large

for an individual to know all of them. We have a name for that. It is called

“patriotism.”

Behaving on a still higher moral level were the astronauts who went to the

Moon, for their actions tend toward the survival of the entire race of mankind. The

door they opened leads to the hope that h. sapiens will survive indefinitely long,

even longer than this solid planet on which we stand tonight. As a direct result of

what they did, it is now possible that the human race will never die.

Many short-sighted fools think that going to the Moon was just a stunt. But

the astronauts knew the meaning of what they were doing, as is shown by Neil