COLLATERAL READINGS SUGGESTED

IN CONNECTION WITH ESSAY XI.

Spencer's Psychology, Data of Ethics, and Ethics of Kant (in Fortnightly Review, July, 1888, and Popular Science Monthly, September, 1888); Fiske's Cosmic Philosophy; Bain's Moral Science; Staniland Wake's Evolution of Morality; Savage's Morals of Evolution; Thompson's Problem of Evil; Schurman's Kantian Ethics and Ethics of Evolution, and Ethical Import of Darwinism; Clifford's Scientific Basis of Morals (in Contemporary Review, September, 1875); Sheldon Amos's Science of Law; Dr. C. C. Everett's Essay on The New Ethics (in Unitarian Review, October, 1878); Frances Power Cobbe's Darwinism in Morals; On a Moral Sense, in Darwin's Descent of Man.

EVOLUTION OF MORALS.*

"Virtue is the adherence in action to the nature of things, and the nature of things makes it prevalent." RALPH WALDO EMERSON: Spiritual Laws.

It has been tersely said that "the moral is the measure of health." This is true not only of man, but of ideas, of institutions, of religions, and of philosophical systems. These, too, are rightly regarded with suspicion if found wanting when subjected to the moral test. A system of thought doubtless finds its ultimate sanctions in evidences appealing to the intellect; but any apparent deficiencies on the ethical side, affecting the guidance of conduct and the development of character, should justly subject its claims to renewed and rigid scrutiny. That only is completely reasonable which is sane, healthy, moral.

It is precisely on this ground that the Evolution philosophy has been most violently assailed by its critics. This fact, however, should not of itself create distrust of the essential validity of the philosophy. Such assaults have been the common fate of all new systems of thought, since man began to drop the plummets of his reason into the ocean-depths of his physical and psychical being and environment. To the conservative mind, the new and untrodden path always seems full of dangers. The turn-pike road of the fathers is the safe and narrow way. The engineer who sets out through the wilderness to survey a path for the iron rails, is committing an act of sacrilege and impiety. Seeing that this is so, it behooves us nevertheless to look well to the ethical foundations of this new doctrine of Evolution. The welfare of men and of kingdoms may depend upon their stability and strength.

The present age is a period of transition. Old sanctions are being undermined. Man fronts the Universe and the problems of life in a new attitude. The revolution in thought through which we are passing has been well termed, by

* COPYRIGHT, 1889, by The New Ideal Publishing Co.

Mr. Savage, "A change of front of the Universe." It is the passage of man, in his mental estate, from dependent childhood to self-reliant manhood-always a critical and dangerous period in the history of the individual, none the less critical and dangerous in the life of a nation or a civilization. Heretofore the ethical systems of the world have, in the main, rested on the sanctions of theology — upon man's thought of God-instead of upon the Divine Reality as revealed in the nature of things. It has been assumed that man's supreme obligations were due to God or the gods, as he conceived them, and that they were enforced by a system of rewards and penalties to be bestowed or inflicted in a future state of existence. The new philosophy affirms that man's primary obligation is to his fellow-man-that duty grows out of the necessities of social communion; that it is founded in the nature of things, instead of in the arbitrary will of an absent deity; that its penalties are not extrinsic but intrinsic. that they are registered immediately on the tablets of character, and their enforcement is dependent upon no speculative beliefs, whatever may be the theological implications involved in such beliefs. The old sanctions, resting on theology, are losing their force and efficacy in all thinking minds. A few only, as yet, comprehend the significance and bearing of modern cientific thought, and especially of the doctrine of evolution, upon the foundations of morality; hence the assumed and not altogether imaginary danger of a "moral interregnum" —a temporary lapse into laxity of thought and depravity of life.

Intuitional metaphysics joins with theology in the attempt to discredit the foundations of evolutionary ethics. The sanctions of morality, it declares, rest not indeed upon the arbitrary mandates of deity, but upon the nature of the human mind. The sense of obligation is a primary intuition of consciousness. It has had no causal genesis-no historical evolution. Its "ought" is the "categorical imperative," which cannot be analyzed, scientifically investigated, or traced to any less definite or coherent substratum of primitive impulse. The intuitive system appeals for rational recognition by its fundamental assumption of the supremacy of reason, and affirms its competence to deal with the problems of philosophy and psychology by the deductive or a priori method, independent of the facts of experience.

In ethics, it rejects as incompetent all moral judgments based upon experiential tests.

The actual bearing of the doctrine thus assailed, upon ethical sanctions, may best be understood by the study of its theory of the genesis and development of the moral sense. It should be said at the outset, however, that the leading representatives of the new school of thought by no means admit the validity of these charges of their critics. The evolution philosophy affirms the supremacy of ethics, and makes moral science the culmination of its entire system of thought. "My ultimate purpose," says Mr. Spencer, in his preface to the Data of Ethics, lying behind all proximate purposes, has been that of finding for the principles of right and wrong, in conduct at large, a scientific basis." In its investigation of morals, the new philosophy lays its foundation upon the solid rock of fact, as revealed in human experience. Its ethical structure does not rest upon a cloud-fabric of theological or metaphysical assumption, but upon human nature itself. upon man's natural desire and effort to make the most of life, both in its personal and its social aspects, and upon the observed good or evil effects of actions, judged by this practical test. collecting and collating its facts, it follows the scientific. method- studying man as he exists to-day, and as he has existed throughout the entire period of his evolution. As in the field of the physical sciences, commencing with the historical era, it prolongs its vision into prehistoric times by a legitimate use of the scientific imagination. By the study of savage races and the investigation of language and archæological remains, it forms a vivid conception of man as he was gradually outgrowing the inheritance of his brute ancestry, and progressing toward civilization.

In

Even more deeply than this, the Evolution philosophy searches for facts on which to rest its science of morals. It perceives that moral conduct is only a part of a larger whole-conduct in general. It is necessary, therefore, to study conduct first in its universal aspect, in order rightly to estimate the nature and status of ethical conduct. Conduct may be tersely defined, in the language of Mr. Spencer, as "acts adjusted to ends." * It includes only those actions which are accompanied by volition, excluding those which are automatic and mechanical. In the lower forms of or*Spencer's Data of Ethics.

ganic life, consciousness is vague, indefinite, and protoplasmic -limited to mere sentience in its most primitive and undifferentiated form. Such organisms manifest but little evidence of definite, conscious purpose. Their action is mainly automatic, in response to external stimuli. The polyp has no special organs of sense; it does not even seek intelligently for its food, or manifest a definite purpose to propagate its kind. Its action is more like that of a vegetable than a conscious being. Attached to a support, it appropriates suitable articles of nourishment whenever they are brought in contact with it by the action of external forces. It propagates its race by gemmation or budding, like a vegetable organism. The differentiation of purposeful actions, as we ascend the scale of being, is a gradual and progressive process-a process of evolution. With greater complexity of structure, we find an ever-increasing number of purposeful actions, directed toward definite and intelligible ends. Food is intelligently sought, instead of being passively appropriated from accidental contact. Dangers are intentionally avoided. Life becomes less the sport of accident-comes more and more within the scope of intelligent volition. The probability of fulfilling its natural period steadily increases as we advance from infusorium to ascidian, from ascidian to fish, from fish to reptile, from reptile to mammal, from brute to man. Life not only increases in relative duration, but also in breadth or amount. Conduct increases in complexity as it reaches successively higher stages of evolution. In estimating the relative position of an organism in the scale of being, we must consider not merely the length of its life, but rather the sum of its vital activities. The elephant lives longer than man, but it does not live as much as man. Its activities are fewer, its adjustments of acts to ends less definite and numerous. This principle of the gradual evolution of conduct in definiteness and complexity applies not only to conduct in general, but also, evidently, to those volitional acts which constitute the yet undifferentiated protoplasm of moral conduct.

The primary motive which governs the purposeful actions of the lower organisms is the desire for self-preservation. Their voluntary movements are directed to securing nutriment, and to escaping from dangers which threaten to terminate their existence. Propagating with marvelous