EVOLUTION AND ETHICS 225 



nomics of the Industrial Revolution. The great nations of 

 today are politically synthetic and held together by a quasi- 

 religious indoctrination to patriotism. And, if the world is 

 to survive, they are but a passing phase. I have given much 

 more space to the Keith thesis than it deserves only because 

 it is accepted, particularly for the reason that it excuses na- 

 tionalism, in many powerful quarters of the world today. 

 Then, too, the tooth-and-claw thesis and modifications of 

 it, as usually interpreted, would relegate reason to the realm 

 of limbo. It is a hopeful sign that now so many of our scien- 

 tists and philosophers are beginning to write boldly of an eth- 

 ics based on science and knowledge— G. G. Simpson, Julian 

 Huxley, E. W. Sinnott, C. D. Leake, Ashley Montagu, Ber- 

 rrand Russell, and O. L. Reiser, to name a few. This ap- 

 proach through knowledge to the problem of ethics will 

 come up again shortly; there are still some less promising at- 

 tempts to establish a naturalistic ethic that should be con- 

 sidered. 



Various forms of a mutual aid survival ethic have gradu- 

 ally developed in opposition to the tooth-and-claw thesis. 

 C. D. Leake in his version finds that "good" is based on a 

 relationship between individuals and groups in contact with 

 each other that is conducive to the survival of all concerned. 

 Harmony increases the probability of survival; the greater 

 the harmony, the greater the probability. This version grew 

 out of the general survival ethic as originally proposed by 

 Herbert Spencer, but it is much truer to the evolutionary 

 process than the older tooth-and-claw version. For, it is 

 good to survive by cooperative and harmonious means and 

 not just by any means. 



It is an ethic that a modern evolutionist (e.g., Simpson) 

 finds congruous with most ethical systems other than the 

 tooth-and-claw, and it can be established on a naturalistic 

 basis. There are, however, certain questionable aspects to a 

 purely cooperative basis of survival. The highest good in 

 this ethic would involve complete and absolute harmony, 



