EVOLUTION IN PROFESSOR HUXLEY. 329 



very heart of goodness " ; the explicit denial that evolution can 

 teach us why good is to be preferred to evil, and the representa- 

 tion of the ethical combating the cosmic process mean no more 

 than that a difference has been established essentially similar to 

 that which exists between social and solitary caterpillars. 



I am confident that in my interpretation I can only be doing 

 the right honorable professor justice, for who out of Bedlam 

 would call the gregarious mode of growth of a patch of mercury 

 grass an ethical process ? We might just as truly attribute 

 " calculation " to crystals, and " amorousness " to oxygen. 



Of course, evolution will cause a social organism so to grow or 

 so to act as not to destroy itself. To do this is one thing, to see 

 that it is its duty so to act is quite another. 



Prof. Huxley informs us * that to his knowledge no one 



professes to doubt that, so far as we possess a power of bettering things, it is our 

 paramount duty to use it and to train all our intellect and energy to the service 

 of our kind. 



But it is questionable whether some pessimists would not only 

 doubt, but even deny, this assertion ; and it is only too plain that, 

 without professing to doubt it, multitudes of men and women by 

 their actions practically deny it. Prof. Huxley's assertion is an 

 uncompromising " categorical imperative," and, of course, will re- 

 ceive the support of absolute morality ; but whence does he derive 

 such an ethical ideal ? Man did not voluntarily and consciously 

 invent it. It was m him, but not of him. To this it may be re- 

 plied that only developed man has such perceptions, and that the 

 thoughtless brains of a savage are devoid of all ethical intuitions, 

 while every one must admit that the infant gives no evidence of 

 their presence. But to say that because the infant does not mani- 

 fest them it does not possess them, would be as reasonable as to 

 say that because a field shows no sprouting corn there can be no 

 corn beneath its surface ! As to savages, I have elsewhere f stated 

 my reason for believing they have essentially the same nature 

 that we have ourselves. If I were wrong in this, I should not 

 regard them as men. I should not care if it could be proved that 

 intellect and ethical perception did not anywhere exist a hundred 

 years ago. I know that they exist now, and I know that a being 

 who possesses them is, and must be, of an absolutely different 

 nature from one who does not. As a fact, I think few will dis- 

 pute that most infants which live to adult age and many savages 

 who come in close contact with Europeans clearly demonstrate 

 that their " nature " was rational, however tardy and impeded 

 may have been their manifestation of rationality. 



* [December Monthly, p. 187.] 



f See On Truth (Kegan Paul, Trench & Co.), chapter xix, pp. 282-294. 

 VOL. XLIV. 2fi 



