ETHICS IN NATURAL LAW. 327 



but the existence and potency of wliicli constitute tlie most cer- 

 tain of all our knowledge. 



Not Nirvana, therefore, but effort ; not death, but life, the 

 development of moral power, and an ever-deepening moral con- 

 sciousness through conflict with evil, is the lesson of evolutionary- 

 ethics. Nor are we left to despair at the duration and impotency 

 of the struggle. Its final subjective outcome is foreseen to be 

 like that of all other conscious endeavor, become habitual a nat- 

 ural spontaneity of right action wherein men shall serve the right 

 neither for ho]3e of reward nor fear of penalty, but from a divine 

 inner necessity, which at once compels the volition and brings 

 the unsought compensation of the highest intellectual satisfac- 

 tions. 



But, says Prof. Huxley, admitting that the moral consciousness 

 is the result of evolution, "immoral as well as moral sentiments 

 have been evolved by evolution. . . . There is, so far, as much 

 natural sanction for one as for the other. . . . Cosmic evolution 

 is incompetent to furnish any better reason why what we call 

 good is preferable to what we call evil than we had before." Let 

 it be granted that the facts of human experience are more power- 

 ful than any theories as guides to individual action. If it were 

 not so, the progress of the race would indeed be slow. But what is 

 this but a recognition of the fact that morality is the result of an 

 actual process of evolution which is independent of all mere doc- 

 trinal speculation ? No rational theory of ethics, however, can fail 

 to recognize that a true x^hilosophy of life, a correct understanding 

 of its facts, must furnish a tremendous incentive to right action. 

 Just here, indeed, has been one of the chief stumbling-blocks in 

 the path of moral progress. The race has been weighed down 

 with disheartening theories of total depravity, moral lapse, and 

 the inefficacy of natural effort for the improvement of character, 

 at variance with all the known facts of human history. But evo- 

 lution demonstrates that immoral and even criminal actions as 

 we now regard them are usually survivals of customs or habits 

 at some past time justified by the conditions of the physical and 

 social environment. This furnishes at once hope for further prog- 

 ress by demonstrating the progress which has actually taken 

 place and evolved a sense of evil in the commission of unsocial 

 acts, and a hint as to the right method of promoting advancement 

 in morally defective individuals. The recognition of the defect 

 as a survival of past customary conditions is itself conclusive tes- 

 timony to moral progress. The ultimate objective test of the 

 moral character of an action is its influence in promoting fullness 

 of life in the individual and in the race. To say that there is as 

 much natural sanction for an immoral as for a moral action be- 

 cause both exist in the present stage of social evolution, is equiva- 



