president's address. 841 



No scientific writer of modern times has exhibited a greater 

 mastery of apposite and forcible metaphor than Mr. Huxley. 

 But there have been occasions like that I now refer to when the 

 metaphor is so forcible that it appears to carry off its author 

 bodily. 



If ethical process is really the legitimate offspring of the cosmic 

 process, then all the features subsequently revealed in the former 

 have surely a full hereditary title to the name and privileges of 

 the parent. And indeed Mr. Huxley was forward to remark 

 that none was more willing than he to admit the ultimate 

 identity of the two kinds of process. And yet he immediately 

 pushes the idea of the war between offspring and parent so as to 

 warrant the conclusion that the processes somehow become 

 essentially distinct. 



It is by no means hard to perceive that the source of the 

 so-called paradox is to be found in Mr. Huxley's identification of 

 " cosmic process," in its evolutionary aspect, chiefly if not entirely 

 with the principle of natural selection. And of course when he 

 goes on to recognise that a condition of human progress on the 

 ethical side has been a restriction and limitation of the struggle 

 for existence amounting almost to the suppression of its inter- 

 necine features, he is constrained to express the difference as a 

 war between parent and child, between the cosmic and the 

 ethical processes. But surely, and I sa}' it with all respect, this 

 is the most utterly obvious fallacy. Eitlier the forms and 

 institutions of ethical activity ai'e a non-natural product, and no 

 genuine daughters of the cosmic process, or else they are as much 

 cosmic in their origin and essential nature as are the satellites of 

 Jupiter. How can they, from Prof. Huxley's point of view, 

 ever cease to be cosmic or even begin to become anything else 1 



Such is the preliminary difficulty or confusion. Let us see 

 how it works out in other directions. Allusion is made to "bee 

 society " as a somewhat analogous phenomenon to that of human 

 society. " Bee society," we are informed, " is the direct product 

 of an organic necessity impelling every member of it to a course 

 of action which tends to the good of the whole. Each bee has 



