ETHICS AND THE DEVELOPMENT THEORY. 375 



endowed with it to maintain himself ? The principle of natural selec- 

 tion is not contradicted by any fact in the history of mankind. The 

 determination of what of its members shall survive is an affair of the 

 particular constitution of a society. There are, as Everett * has re- 

 marked, different kinds and degrees of immorality which are always 

 important to the result. A certain degree of honor, according to the 

 proverb, is required for a man to preserve his social standing in a so- 

 ciety of thieves. But, besides the avoidance of flagrant violations of 

 the social contract, there is nothing which is universally and always 

 debarred by the demands of the social environment. The man who 

 was fitted to succeed in the early days of the Roman Republic would 

 have failed in the later age of the empire ; and one whom the social 

 elements of the empire lifted up would have fared badly in the time 

 of the republic. Indeed, societies in which the highest and noblest 

 moral attributes are a passport to success are very rare. The "fittest " 

 in the moral sense, and the " fittest " in the sense of Darwinism, are not 

 often the same. 



And is this the last word that is to be said for Darwinism in its 

 relation to morals ? Is the judgment that the moral best and the fit- 

 test in the Darwinian sense are often not the same, of unconditioned 

 effect ? We believe not. 



The principle of natural selection regulates not only the life of 

 individuals ; it rules also over the lives of generations and of peoples. 

 It may, indeed, happen to be the means of success in some one common- 

 wealth to practice the religion of s. d. It may be that in a particular 

 society selfishness, cunning, trickery, overbearing violence or fawning 

 subserviency, and moral cowardice, or high living and ostentation, will 

 give good chances for getting on ; men of such characters may have, 

 in some states, the best opportunity to raise themselves and their 

 families, while one who despises injustice, lying, and hypocrisy, will 

 have to go to the wall. But there is, nevertheless, as Matthew Arnold 

 says, "an eternal power, not ourselves, that makes for righteousness." 

 Characteristics, it is true, are transmitted ; but not in the same com- 

 binations as they existed in the father or the mother ; immoral charac- 

 teristics, like those we have named, never in that which is adapted to 

 insure success in a certain constitution of society. If we allow, by 

 transmission or by training, some other peculiar quality to enter into 

 the composition of the character, or if we let a certain quality be lost, 

 then that "lucky balance" that brought success will be destroyed. 

 The chances that the posterity of men possessing such traits of charac- 

 ter as we have sketched will maintain themselves long, that they will 

 not, sooner or later, fail, in consequence of collisions with the " physi- 

 cal, legal, or social sanction," with the laws of health or of the state, 

 or with the demands of society, are not very great. 



But "the eternal power, not ourselves, that makes for righteous- 

 * C. C. Everett, in " Unitarian Review," October, 1878; "The New Ethics." 



