222 evolution: the ages and tomorrow 



The claims of organized dogma for the eternal and abso- 

 lute validity of ethics were discredited after Darwin's time 

 by psychologists following the Freudian revolution and by 

 anthropologists who found extreme differences in the ethical 

 systems existing in various societies. Psychologists have been 

 able to show that ethics depends on learning and psycho- 

 logical conditioning, mostly during childhood. The be- 

 havior of the adult is largely relative to these learning proc- 

 esses, the basic "learning sets" which were discussed in the 

 origin of conceptual processes. Anthropology documents a 

 wide divergence in ethical systems in different societies, all 

 more or less relative to the social structure and various en- 

 vironmental factors. E. Westermark in his book, Ethical 

 Relativity, gives us the picture of nature, as always, explor- 

 ing the human social possibilities and not knowing a priori 

 where the various controlling factors will lead her. 



Of the early Darwinians who took on the burden of pro- 

 moting the ideals of evolution and selection and their social 

 significance, T. H. Huxley was the most active. In his later 

 life he found his ideas of ethics and of evolution in conflict. 

 Some evolutionists of his day had taken very literally the 

 Darwinian "struggle for existence." To these men evolu- 

 tionary ethics involved a sort of "gladiatorial existence"— 

 every man for himself, every group, tribe, or nation for it- 

 self, and the "Devil take the hindmost." In certain political 

 and economic quarters, then and even now, this gross misin- 

 terpretation of Darwin, this brutal "tooth-and-claw" ethics 

 found favor. Although he most ardently adopted the fact of 

 evolution, Huxley could not bring himself as an ethical hu- 

 man into line with what he thought were evolutionary 

 ethics. For him, evolution had brought the physical man 

 into existence by a tooth-and-claw struggle, a struggle in- 

 volving "ape and tiger traits," which constituted "the essen- 

 tial evil of the world." But as consciousness dawned in man, 

 Huxley thought, a new ethics appeared and, becoming 

 dominant, brought to an end the age-long physical evolu- 



