A VINDICATION OF SCIENTIFIC ETHICS. 329 



that wrong action tends to lower life and ultimately to extinction of 

 life, should scarcely, one would think, be a sterile or inoperative one. 

 Much would depend, no doubt, upon the mode in which the thought 

 was presented by those who have it in their power to influence public 

 opinion. That the minds of a large portion of the community have 

 been so poisoned by the drugs of a false theology as to be incapable of 

 responding to any teaching based on the pure laws of nature there is 

 only too much reason to believe ; but I should refuse to admit as valid 

 against the evolutionist system of morals any argument drawn from 

 their present condition or requirements. 



The objections made to Mr. Spencer's explanation of the difference 

 between right and wrong are very similar to those made to the Dar- 

 winian theory of the descent of man. In the dispute which raged 

 more violently some years ago than it does now in reference to this 

 question, an angelic character pronounced himself " on the side of the 

 angels," as was but natural. It was thought utterly derogatory to 

 man's dignity to suppose that his ancestry could run back into the 

 brute creation ; and so to-day it seems to threaten the stability of all 

 moral distinctions to connect moral actions, by any process of filiation, 

 with actions which, as wo understand morality, present no moral 

 character whatever. But just as no theory of man's origin can make 

 him other than he actually is to-day, so no theory of the origin of 

 morality can affect the fact that in the conscience of the modern civ- 

 ilized man there is a great gulf fixed between right and wrong. But, 

 some will say, upon the evolution theory the highest morality is but 

 self-seeking. Be it so, but if myself embraces other selves, if my per- 

 sonality has globed itself out till it includes a large portion of human- 

 ity, I can afford to be self-seeking without any falling away from no- 

 bility or disinterestedness. When Jesus said, " He that saveth his life 

 shall lose it, and he that loseth his life shall save it," he meant, as we 

 have always understood, that a careful study and pursuit of narrow 

 personal interests would involve the sacrifice of wider and nobler in- 

 terests ; and that, on the other hand, by a surrender of our lower selves, 

 we could rise to higher life. From whichever point we view it, he 

 bids us aim at life, and so far he might be accused of prompting to 

 self-seeking ; but when we once see how life may be understood, and 

 what it may be made to include, we perceive how pointless is the ob- 

 jection. It is indeed difficult to imagine how any person, except one 

 who had been restrained from evil simply by superstitious fears, could 

 feel himself less bound to do right and avoid wrong because he had 

 been shown that right actions to-day are the lineal descendants of all 

 those actions, conscious and unconscious, by which life has been pre- 

 served, and improved in the past, and that wrong actions claim their 

 paternity in whatever in the past has tended to disintegration, degra- 

 dation, and death. Who would not rather be on the side of the forces 

 of life, in harmony with and aiding the upward movement of nature, 



