762 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



was what it is represented to have been by Socrates and Plato. It 

 would also seem to be a pretty conclusive answer to those who deride 

 the apprehension of a moral interregnum, and feel confident that 

 society is going to sail, without interruption or disturbance of its rule 

 of conduct, out of the zone of theistic into that of scientific morality. 

 It appears that between one state and the other there may be an inter- 

 val in which the question will be not between the moral and the 

 immoral, but between the top and the under dog. 



The Marquis of Steyne is an organism, and, like all other organ- 

 isms, so long as he succeeds in maintaining himself against competing 

 organisms, is able to make good his title to existence under the law of 

 natural selection. He has his pleasures : they are not those of a St. 

 Paul, or a Shakespeare, or a Wilberforce, but they are his. They 

 make him happy, according to the only measure of happiness which he 

 can conceive ; and if he is cautious, as a sagacious voluptuary will be, 

 they need not diminish his vitality, they may even increase it both in 

 duration and intensity, though they may play havoc with the welfare 

 of a number of victims and dependents. He may successively seduce 

 a score of women without bad consequences to himself. Why is he 

 doing wrong ? In the name of what do you peremptorily summon him 

 to return to the path of virtue ? In the name of altruistic pleasure ? 

 He happens to be one of those organisms which are not capable of it. 

 In the name of a state of society which is to come into existence long 

 after he has moldered to dust in the family mausoleum of the Gaunts? 

 His reply will furnish the anthropologist with a fine illustration of the 

 faculty of facial expression. Suppose you could induce him to try a 

 course of virtue, or of altruism, if the term is more scientific, what in 

 his case would be the practical result ? Would it not be a painful 

 conflict between passion and conscience, or perhaps, in the terms of 

 the evolutionary philosophy, between presented sensations on the one 

 hand, and represented or re-represented sensations on the other ? Is 

 it not probable that he would end his days before that conflict had 

 been brought to a close? Its fruits, however imperfect, would, of 

 course, be both happy and precious in the estimation of theism ; but 

 in the estimation of the philosophy embodied in the " Data of Ethics," 

 what could they be but pleasure, unquestionable pleasure, lost, and 

 pain, pain of a very distressing kind, incurred ? And so with other 

 organisms, which, as Dr. Yan Buren Denslow would say, are pursuing 

 their peculiar and congenial though conventionally reprobated walks 

 of life. The assassin, the robber, and the sharper have their status in 

 nature, as well as any other members of the predatory tribes. It is 

 possible that by the gradual triumph of industry over militarism, and 

 the general progress of evolution, those changes which Mr. Spencer 

 confidently predicts may be brought about. The wolf may become as 

 the lamb, and may even in the general competition for altruistic 

 pleasures tenderly conjure the lamb to eat him. At present he is a 



