The Importance of Individual Variations 461 



tionism. I may, however, here refer to the book of C. M. Williams, 

 A Review of the Systems of Ethics founded on the Theory of 

 Evolution 1 , in which, besides Darwin, the following authors are 

 reviewed : Wallace, Haeckel, Spencer, Fiske, Rolph, Barratt, Stephen, 

 Carneri, Hb'ffding, Gizycki, Alexander, Re"e. As works which criticise 

 evolutionistic ethics from an intuitive point of view and in an 

 instructive way, may be cited : Guyau, La morale anglaise contem- 

 poraine*, and Sorley, Ethics of Naturalism. I will only mention 

 some interesting contributions to ethical discussion which can be 

 found in Darwinism besides the idea of struggle for life. 



The attention which Darwin has directed to variations has 

 opened our eyes to the differences in human nature as well as in 

 nature generally. There is here a fact of great importance for 

 ethical thought, no matter from what ultimate premiss it starts. 

 Only from a very abstract point of view can different individuals be 

 treated in the same manner. The most eminent ethical thinkers, men 

 such as Jeremy Bentham and Immanuel Kant, who discussed ethical 

 questions from very opposite standpoints, agreed in regarding all men 

 as equal in respect of ethical endowment. In regard to Bentham, 

 Leslie Stephen remarks : " He is determined to be thoroughly 

 empirical, to take men as he found them. But his utilitarianism 

 supposed that men's views of happiness and utility were uniform and 

 clear, and that all that was wanted was to show them the means by 

 which their ends could be reached 3 ." And Kant supposed that every 

 man would find the "categorical imperative" in his consciousness, 

 when he came to sober reflexion, and that all would have the same 

 qualifications to follow it. But if continual variations, great or small, 

 are going on in human nature, it is the duty of ethics to make 

 allowance for them, both in making claims, and in valuing what is done. 

 A new set of ethical problems have their origin here 4 . It is an 

 interesting fact that Stuart Mill's book On Liberty appeared in the 

 same year as The Origin of Species. Though Mill agreed with 

 Bentham about the original equality of all men's endowments, he 

 regarded individual differences as a necessary result of physical and 

 social influences, and he claimed that free play shall be allowed 

 to differences of character so far as is possible without injury to 

 other men. It is a condition of individual and social progress that 

 a man's mode of action should be determined by his own character 

 and not by tradition and custom, nor by abstract rules. This view 

 was to be corroborated by the theory of Darwin. 



But here we have reached a point of view from which the 



i New York and London, 1893. 2 Paris, 1879. 



3 English literature and society in the eighteenth century, London, 1904, p. 187. 



4 Cf. my paper, "The law of relativity in Ethics," International Journal of Ethics, Vol. i. 

 1891, pp. 3762. 



