EVOLUTION AND ETHICS 223 



tion. He thought that this new ethics was intuitive and non- 

 evolutionary. In fact, paradoxically, it was anti-evolution- 

 ary, and man's problem was to set himself squarely against 

 the former evolutionary process and thwart it. All the early 

 Darwinians seem to have made the serious error of suppos- 

 ing that man had evolved through, and had always lived in, 

 a ^'continual state of strife, brawl, and anarchy." We know 

 now from the nature of social responses in all animals, par- 

 ticularly the primates, that such a "brutal Hfe" would in it- 

 self have thwarted evolution. 



Even quite recently (1947) the tooth-and-claw ethics ap- 

 pears again in modified form in the literature of morals, this 

 time from the pen of the aged anthropologist Sir Arthur 

 Keith in a strange book. Evolution and Ethics. Taking his 

 lead from T. H. Huxley, Keith distinguishes an "ethical 

 code" by which individuals relate themselves to each other 

 within a tribe and a "cosmical code" which controls the sur- 

 vival of the tribal institution in its relation as a whole with 

 other tribes. He tells us that until the introduction of civi- 

 lization man lived in small, isolated communities or tribes, 

 each under this dual evolutionary code: 



Its [the tribe's] "home affairs" were under the control of the 

 ethical code, observing the Ten Commandments, encouraging co- 

 operation, friendliness, and sympathy. Its "foreign affairs" were in 

 the hands of the cosmical code, taking every measure and employing 

 physical force, if necessary, to ensure tribal independence, in- 

 tegrity, and continuance, reversing the commandments relating to 

 killing, stealing, and lying when such conduct was advantageous 

 for tribal welfare. Every tribe, we may say, had its ethical core of 

 co-operation and its cosmical crust of antagonism. Out of that 

 crust war was born. Civilization has brought both good and evil 

 to mankind; under its aegis the small evolutionary (tribal) units 

 have become fused into the monstrous evolutionary units we call 

 nations. The generations of humanity which carried mankind from 

 a tribal to a national estate brought with them the "old Adam"— 

 the dual evolutionary code. The ethical core has been mightily 

 strengthened by the free diffusion of the spoken and written word. 

 Alas, the cosmical crust has also expanded, at a rate even more 



