ETHICS IN NATURAL LAW. 323 



of his Romanes address at Oxford has been hailed by skeptics as 

 to the theory of evolution as a complete surrender of its claims in 

 the higher fields of ethics and sociology. Using the nursery tale 

 of Jack and the Beanstalk as illustration, Prof. Huxley assumes 

 with the Hindu and Buddhist sages that the cosmic process is 

 one of recurring cyclical changes of alternating development 

 and disintegration in which no real and definite progress is dis- 

 cernible. And what is true in the field of physics, he says, "is 

 true of living things in general. . . . The process of life presents 

 the same appearance of cyclical evolution." Moreover, "where 

 the cosmopoietic energy works through sentient beings, there 

 arises, among its other manifestations, that which we call pain 

 and suffering. This baleful product of evolution increases in 

 quantity and intensity, with advancing grades of animal organi- 

 zation, until it attains its highest level in man. Further, the con- 

 summation is not reached in man, the mere animal ; nor in man 

 the wholly or half savage, but only in man the member of an 

 organized polity ; and it is a necessary consequence of his attempt 

 to live in this way that is, under those conditions which are es- 

 sential to the full development of his noblest powers." Ergo, he 

 tacitly and avowedly assumes, no moral tendency or purpose or 

 effect are predicable of the cosmic energy ; on the contrary, " the 

 ethical progress of society depends, not on imitating the cosmic 

 process, still less in running away from it, but in combating it." 

 The relation of man to Nature is one of insoluble dualism and 

 eternal antagonism. His onlj^ hope of individual salvation and 

 social amelioration is to struggle continually against her cosmic 

 tendencies, enduring an ever-increasing consciousness of the 

 stress and pain involved of necessity in the age-long struggle. 

 As a teacher in the field of ethics, she can only show him " how 

 not to do it." 



Without attempting an elaborate argument in reply to Prof. 

 Huxley's positions, which have already run the gantlet of much 

 favorable and adverse criticism, I may perhaps be permitted to 

 make them the text of a brief exposition of what I conceive to be 

 the true and logical bearing of evolutionary thought upon the 

 great problem of man's relation to the universe, and of his moral 

 nature to those physical and biological conditions under which he 

 has come into existence, and upon normal relations to which his 

 well-being admittedly depends. 



Let me ask, at the outset, by what authority as an evolutionist 

 does Prof. Huxley revert to the old theological conception which 

 places Nature and man in radical antithesis ? Is not the human 

 mind, including its loftiest ethical determinations, as much the 

 product of evolution, a part of universal Nature, as the brute 

 forces which control the struggle for existence in the lower planes 



