26 EVOLUTION AXD ETHICS 



all possible worlds, it nevertheless proved itself a .very 

 inconvenient habitation for the ideal sage. 



The stoical summary of the whole duty of man, 

 ' Live according to nature/ would seem to imply that 

 the cosmic process is an exemplar for human conduct. 

 Ethics would thus become applied Natural History. 

 In fact, a confused employment of the maxim, in this 

 sense, has done immeasurable mischief in later times. 

 It has furnished an axiomatic foundation for the 

 philosophy of philosophasters and for the moralizing 

 of sentimentalists. But the Stoics were, at bottom, not 

 merely noble, but sane, men; and if we look closely into 

 what they really meant by this ill-used phrase, it 

 will be found to present no justification, for the mis- 

 chievous conclusions that have been deduced from it. 



In the language of the Stoa, ' Nature ' was a word 

 of many meanings. There w r as the ' Nature ' of the 

 cosmos and the ' Nature ' of man. In the latter, the 

 animal ' nature,' which man shares with a moiety of 

 the living part of the cosmos, was distinguished from 

 a higher ' nature.' Even in this higher nature there 

 were grades of rank. The logical faculty is an in- 

 strument which may be turned to account for any 

 purpose. The passions and the emotions are so 

 closely tied to the lower nature that they may be 

 considered to be pathological rather than normal 

 phenomena. The one supreme, hegemonic, faculty, 

 which constitutes the essential ' nature ' of man is 

 most nearly.represented by that which, in the language 

 of a later philosophy, has been called the pure 

 reason. It is this ' nature ' which holds up the 



