those less favourably endowed die out. Such a variation tends by the law of Inheritance to be perpetuated, and thus by the slow accumulation of slight increments of difference a variation from the original type is at length produced, so marked as to explain why certain kinds of beings have been classed as independent species. Besides this process of Natural Selection, another less potent cause, which tends to a like result, is that of Sexual Selection,* depending upon a struggle between the individuals of one sex for the possession of the other sex. The whole theory may be summed up in the words of one of its ablest advocates :"All the phenomena of organic nature, past and present, result from or are caused by the interaction of those properties of organic matter called ATAVISM and VARIABILITY, with the CONDITIONS OF EXISTENCE; or, in other words,-given the existence of organic matter, its tendency to transmit its properties, and its tendency occasionally to vary; and, lastly, given the conditions of existence by which organic matter is surrounded-these put together are the causes of the Present and the Past conditions of ORGANIC NATURE.”+

This statement of the salient points of the doctrine of Evolution has been introduced as a basis upon which to rest two plain inferences. The first inference is that, admitting its truth, the theory is not competent to do more than explain generally how the various species of organic beings have as a matter of fact arisen in process of time. It declares that those characteristics which in certain given conditions are most favourable to the preservation of the plant's or animal's life have something to do with the being's preservation, but it does not pretend to say upon what those characteristics ultimately depend. The socalled laws of Inheritance and Variability are simply empirical generalizations,not comparable in any strict sense with an absolute physical law, such as that "bodies attract each other proportionally to their mass and inversely as the square of their distance."

* Sexual Selection may be practically left out of account, more especially as Mr. Wallace has recently expressed his conviction that its influence has been altogether overrated. See Academy, June 17, 1876, p. 588.

Huxley On the Origin of Species, Am. Ed., 1863, p. 131.

Nor does the theory throw any light, except perhaps incidentally, upon the disputed question of the nature of Life; wherein it consists, and how living things are demarcated, if at all, from inorganic matter; it simply tells us that certain characteristics end by being slowly intensified to alter the physical features of organic beings. But if the theory does not account for more than phenomenal manifestations and changes; if it determines nothing about the relations of life and matter, much less can it give any assistance in the case of problems which depend for their solution upon the nature of consciousness and reason. The bearing of this conclusion will appear further on; at present the important thing to note is, that the doctrine of Evolution is a purely physical theory, and even as such only an empirical law destitute of the accuracy and stability of the highest kind of natural law.

Now, this inference seems effectually to dispose of any claim the doctrine of Evolution might be supposed to have to determine the validity or invalidity, or in any way to affect the truth, of moral conceptions. For, granting in the meantime that the law of Natural Selection is of a nature to explain how the infinite diversity of moral ideas, past and present, has arisen, it is difficult to see how this in any way enables us to decide which ideas are true and which false, or indeed whether any of them are true. The mere fact that under certain conditions certain moral conceptions prevail, does not help us in the least to determine what the relation or absolute value of competing conceptions may be. No doubt we may, by comparing these conceptions together, decide their comparative worth, but such a comparison is not a part of the doctrine of Evolution, but a purely ethical question, to be determined upon purely ethical grounds. To state the special ways in which a class of ideas has come into existence is one thing; to appraise these ideas according to their moral value is another and a very different thing; and the doctrine of Evolution being necessarily limited by its very nature. to the former task, is impotent to undertake the latter task. If, for example, it were argued, as it has been argued, that the fact of contradictory moral conceptions being held at different times and among different nations shows that truth on ethical questions

drawn, that the theory of Evolution limits itself to the discovery of the laws that regulate the physical variations of living beings. For as the reasonings by which these laws are proved do not affect the truth or falsehood of a single moral idea, they supply no standard by reference to which the varying conceptions that from time to time present themselves may be arranged in a graduated scale of excellence, and therefore no possible criterion of moral progress. The conception of progress necessarily implies a regular advance towards a predetermined goal, and until that goal has been fixed upon, at least provisionally, it is impossible to say whether a given series of movements has been forward or backward. Were it not that every one has in his mind a ready-made standard of morality, which has got there in a way that it would puzzle him exactly to trace, and which therefore seems an unprovable intuition, the Evolutionist would not imagine that he is establishing the fact of moral progress by physical reasonings, when in reality he is resting it upon quite other grounds. But by a very natural confusion, arising from imperfection of analysis, he attempts to prove that morality is progressive by assuming, to begin with, that moral progress has been made. It is this tacit assumption that gives plausibility to the argument by which one of Mr. Darwin's disciples has recently tried to show that the doctrine of Evolution affords a strong à priori presumption in favour of existing moral conceptions. "If we are satisfied," says Mr. Frederick Pollock,* "that the process of development is on the whole towards an end which appears to us as right, then there is at least some scientific presumption in favour of existing morality, such as we find it in the judgment of the average right-minded man, and the burden of proof is on those who assert that in any particular case it requires correction." In other words, the doctrine of Evolution necessarily implies a process of development from lower to higher. This assumption, however, as has been shown, cannot be justified, as indeed is virtually admitted when the limiting clause "on the whole" is inserted. The need of such a limitation lies in the fact that the theory only explains how certain organisms, or, if it be extended to morality, certain

*Mind, No. iii. p. 336.

moral conceptions, have grown out of the past, irrespective of whether these are lower or higher than those that have gone before them. Morality has not in all cases gone on in a straight line of development; on the contrary, there are whole nations, it is notorious, that have stood still or gone back. That morality has "on the whole" progressed is no doubt true, and may perhaps be gathered from the materials supplied by the theory of development; but the conception of progress is not an essential part of the theory, nor can it be proved by it. To show that living beings have, on the whole, ⚫ displayed a continuous process of elevation, presupposes a standard of comparison, just as to prove that morality is progressive we must assume a given set of conceptions as at least relatively perfect. The standard is in the one case supplied by the human organism, as in the other it is taken from "existing morality, such as we find it in the judgment of the average right-minded man;" but in either case it has to be fetched from a sphere into which the doctrine of development cannot enter. If, as is distinctly implied, that doctrine can only show that moral progress has taken place by reference to "an end which appears to us as right," that end cannot be proved to be right by being shown to come at the end of a process of development. It is a manifest see-saw to argue that "existing morality" is presumably true because it has been developed, when the only proof of its development is that it is presumably true. The "natural history" of morals, in short, does not tell us which code of morals is true and which false, and therefore cannot establish that morality is progressive. It may, however, be contended that although the doctrine of Evolution does not of itself determine the value of moral conceptions, or account for moral progress, it nevertheless throws light upon ethical questions by supplying a wider range of facts upon which to base an ethical system. This position has now to be investigated.

2. It is undeniable that the Darwinian theory, if true, has incidentally brought out the notion of progress in relation to a class of facts which was supposed to be exempt from it. That notion could hardly be said to be suggested at all in reference to organic beings, so long as species were conceived as completely independent in their origin, and

were simply classified according to their main differences. The development hypothesis, on the other hand, by tracing all past and present species of organic beings back to a few original forms, and explaining their marked differences as due to the gradual accumulation of slight peculiarities, inevitably produced the conviction that the older forms are also the lower, and that, notwithstanding many instances of an opposite tendency, there has been upon the whole a regular rise in the scale of existence. The theory has therefore, apart altogether from its intrinsic merits, done good service in binding together all living things by the bond of a common descent, and thus suggesting the possibility at least of continuous progressive development.

The same claim cannot, however, be made good when we pass from biological to psychological phenomena. The unity of all the races of mankind is not a new but a very old conception; and although anthropology is a comparatively new study, it has not required to wait upon the promulgation of the Darwinian theory for its inauguration and prosecution, although it may have indirectly profited by it, and has certainly received from it a new impulse. But what it especially concerns us to note is, that the conception of progress, including progress in morality, so far from being due to the doctrine of Evolution, had been independently worked out upon a grand scale by men who had no thought of its more recent extension to biological facts. The only question, therefore, which remains to be decided is, whether the results arrived at in the sphere of biology, allowing them to be correct, are applicable to moral problems, and are of such a nature as to supersede the notion of moral progress as it has been hitherto conceived.

It is held by Mr. Darwin and his followers that the true scientific explanation of morality must be sought in the transmission to the early man of the social instincts, including the family ties, to be found in the lower animals. These instincts are not in the animals extended to all individuals of the same species, but are limited to those of the same community; and hence, as was to be expected, the same instincts in savage races of men are directed exclusively to the welfare of the tribe-not that of the species nor of the individual. But "as man ad

vances into civilization, and small tribes are united into larger communities, the simplest reason would tell each individual that he ought to extend his social instincts and sympathies to all the members of the same nation. This point being once reached, there is only an artificial barrier to prevent his sympathies extending to the men of all nations and races."* In short, moral progress consists in strengthening and widening from generation to generation the social instincts originally inherited from some lower form of animal.

This theory attempts to account for moral progress by the convenient method of leaving out all that makes it moral. If the only difference between man and the lower animals is that the former strengthens and widens certain instincts they have in common, it is impossible to explain why we call the one a moral being and the other not. Why should the very same instinct, leading to results of the same kind, be regarded as morally indifferent in the case of animals, and as morally right in the case of man? Or why should an instinct which does not extend beyond one's tribe be regarded as lower from a moral point of view than when it is extended so as to embrace a larger number of persons? It is difficult to see how the mere extension of a feeling which in its essential nature remains absolutely unchanged should so mysteriously alter its nature. an instinct is not moral at one time or in one set of circumstances, it cannot be moral at another time or in another set of circumstances. The only mode of escape from such difficulties is to suppose that an instinct in man is no longer an instinct; a new element being superadded which differentiates man from the animals, and makes him moral.

If

"A moral being," says Mr. Darwin, "is one who is capable of comparing his past and future actions or motives, and of approving or disapproving of them." Had this thought been worked out to its logical consequences, the futility of any physical theory, Darwinism or other, to throw light upon moral problems could hardly have remained concealed. The "capacity of comparing past and future actions or motives" is, in other words, the capacity of holding up one's inner being before one's self, and of

* Darwin's Descent of Man, Am. Ed., p. 96.

apprehending it as essentially and absolutely superior to any single motive that may present itself. The being who possesses this capacity is moral, because he is no longer the sport of each "instinct" or impulse that flits through his brain. When he selects one impulse as better than another he does so consciously and with his mind alert, not blindly and mechanically. Granting that man has inherited from some lower form the "instinct" of sympathy for others; still, so long as we conceive this "instinct " as a blind impulse that hurries him towards a goal from which he cannot retract himself, just so long he is neither moral nor responsible. If man has no power to arrest each impulse as it comes up, none of his acts is higher or lower than another; all are alike morally indifferent. If, on the other hand, he has the capacity of stopping the flow of impulses, of weighing them against each other, and of determining which is most congruous with his rational nature, he is a new creature from whom the consciousness of right and wrong, and of personal responsibility cannot be kept back. So long as we assume nothing but a ceaseless, unarrestable flow of impulses, we can give no valid reason for choosing man as moral, and animals as non-moral. It is, of course, a matter of little importance whether we fix the initial stage of moral development lower than man, or suppose it to have begun with the half-animal progenitor of man; for in either case, between the awakening of the distinctively moral consciousness and the antecedent state, a change must have taken place that was really to the individual, and much more to the race, the beginning of a new era of development. The old "instinct" is no longer what it was: a new element has been added to it that interpenetrates and transforms it, taking it out of the category of non-moral things, and putting it into the category of moral things. This is tacitly implied in Mr. Darwin's definition of a "moral being;" for if morality lies in the capacity of "comparing past and future actions or motives, and of approving or disapproving of them," this capacity is a new element, and must on no account be slurred over as if it were of no importance. This new element is self-consciousness, or reason. The charge from which Mr. Darwin and his followers cannot free themselves is, that while they admit the presence of reason to

be necessary to morality, they still go on to speak of social "instincts" as if no radical change were involved in the presence to instinct of a totally new factor. An "instinct" is definable as a blind, unreasoning impulse; but if the presence of reason enables man to "compare his past and future actions or motives,"—that is, to seize each impulse as it arises, compare it with other impulses, and determine which is most compatible with the conception simultaneously obtained of a self that is more than the passing moment, and therefore cannot be satisfied with a momentary impulse; if all this is implied. in the capacity of being moral, it is manifestly in defiance of the facts to go on talking of man as if he were still governed by "instinct," when in reality he is governed by instinct transformed, which is Reason.

The truth is that Natural Selection, understood in the sense in which it is employed to account for biological phenomena, has no application whatever to moral phenomena. If the social "instincts" are transformed into rational motives before morality can arise at all, moral progress must be conceived as the development of Practical Reason, not as an extension of natural characteristics. To point to the external conditions which accompany the advance of morality-to say, for example, that the tribe which chanced to develop the social instincts most highly, naturally survived--is to overlook the very element that makes the triumph a moral one. No doubt the most moral nation was also the most successful; but it was not success that made it moral, but morality that made it successful. The beginning of morality is when man no longer sways helplessly this way and that, now in the direction of animal impulse, now in that of the social instincts, according as each chances to be uppermost; but when he seizes hold by a primary act of abstraction of himself, as a being who does not perish with the moment, but has a destiny. At first his hold upon his inner rational nature is feeble and fitful, and hence his moral conceptions are obscure and changeable. Nevertheless, in view of its infinite possibilities in the future, this primal act of moral comprehension is an advance that cannot be over-estimated. An animal impulse has been converted into a conscious motive of action, and the subsequent stages of moral progress are assured. At each fresh effort the superior claims of