328 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



lent to saying that there is an equal sanction for the violation of 

 any other natural law with that for its obedience. . The sanction 

 of an action in either instance lies not in the mere fact of its per- 

 formance, but in the improved conditions, material or social, 

 which, are its resultant effects. That which is upbuilding, which 

 tends to fullness of life, is right ; that which tends to deteriora- 

 tion and retrogression is wrong. 



Mr. Huxley apparently gives away bis entire case against evo- 

 lutionary ethics by the assertion that the practice of goodness is 

 directed " not so much to the survival of the fittest as to fitting as 

 many as possible to survive." But surely it can not be doubted 

 that those " fitted to survive " will survive ; hence this confes- 

 sion constitutes a complete justification of evolutionary ethics. 

 Viewed at short range by absolute standards, it may indeed be 

 true that " survival of the fittest " is not always survival of the 

 best. Relatively, however, it is the survival of the best possible 

 under existing conditions ; it points toward the morally perfect 

 which can only be attained through repeated approximations of 

 the relatively good. 



It is true, indeed, that " the theory of evolution furnishes no 

 millennial expectations " for the immediate future, and Prof. Hux- 

 ley has not emphasized too strongly the importance of human in- 

 telligence and will in effecting moral regeneration. But these are 

 powerful for good only as they are duly trained and cultivated ; 

 only as they rigidly note both cosmic and social conditions, and 

 correctly estimate the trend and result of all the complex forces 

 which center upon the life of the individual. It is the great virtue 

 of the evolutionary ethic that it calls man back from the cloud- 

 land of metaphysical speculation, and seeks to enlighten his in- 

 tellect and guide his steps by appeals to the scientifically ascer- 

 tained facts of human experience and the laws by which they are 

 governed. Back to Nature, not in her statical aspects, as dreamed 

 by Rousseau and the eighteenth-century philosophers, but in her 

 dynamical and evolutionary aspects, must we ever go for ethical 

 guidance, encouragement, and inspiration. 



To Herbert Spencer, more than any other among the apostles 

 of evolutionary doctrines, we owe the logical demonstration of 

 the Tinity of man and the universe which eternally forbids the 

 separation of his moral nature from those conditions out of which 

 his whole being had its birth, and to which it is at all times vitally 

 related. No morality in the universe ? None, then, is possible 

 in man. Existing in man, it is predicable also of his great world- 

 mother. This is the irresistible logic of evolutionary ethics. 

 And of him, the ripest thinker on this problem now living, it 

 may well be affirmed, in the language of a poet of the new dis- 

 pensation : 



