EVOLUTION IN ANTIQUITY 7 



I had better put it that ethical man has attained 

 thereto. The science of ethics professes to furnish us 

 with a reasoned rule of life ; to tell us what is right 

 action and why it is so. Whatever difference of 

 opinion may exist among experts, there is a general 

 consensus that the ape and tiger methods of the 

 struggle for existence are not reconcilable with sound 

 ethical principles. 



The hero of our story descended the bean-stalk, and 

 came back to the common world, where fare and work 

 were alike hard ; where ugly competitors were much 

 commoner than beautiful princesses ; and where the 

 everlasting battle with self was much less sure to 



o 



be crowned with victory than a turn-to with a giant. 

 We have done the like. Thousands upon thousands 

 of our fellows, thousands of years ago, have preceded 

 us in finding themselves face to face with the same 

 dread problem of evil. They also have seen that 

 the cosmic process is evolution ; that it is full of 

 wonder, full of beauty, and, at the same time, full of 

 pain. They have sought to discover the bearing 

 of these great facts on ethics ; to find out whether 

 there is, or is not, a sanction for morality in the ways 

 of the cosmos. 



Theories of the universe, in which the conception 

 of evolution plays a leading part, were extant 

 at least six centuries before our era. Certain 

 knowledge of them, in the fifth century, reaches us 

 from localities as distant as the valley of the Ganges 

 and the Asiatic coasts of the ^Egean. To the early 



