EVOLUTION AND ETHICS 229 



must depend on a cooperative and intelligent configuration, 

 an improved and peaceful organization in which the inter- 

 change of experience and knowledge accumulates through 

 science and carries the rising consciousness to higher levels 

 of understanding. 



For this reason it would seem to be of the utmost impor- 

 tance that we develop a naturalistic ethic based on a knowl- 

 edge of all the past processes that have been at work in our 

 evolution, and that we should sincerely face up to all that 

 these processes may mean now and in our future. Simpson in 

 his inspiring book, The Meaning of Evolutioji, sees this 

 clearly when he says: 



Conscious knowledge, purpose, choice, and values carry as an 

 inevitable corollary responsibility. Capacity for knowledge involves 

 responsibility for finding out the truth and, in our social system, 

 for communicating this. The possibility of choice brings an ethical 

 responsibility for selection of what is right. The sense of values 

 implies means and responsibility for decision as to what is right. 

 Purpose confers the power and, again, the responsibility for trans- 

 lating choice and value into right action.* 



Simpson's first proposition of evolutionary ethics is that 

 the "promotion of knowledge is essentially good," a basic 

 material ethic. He explains that "promotion" involves the 

 acquisition of truth and its spread by communication to 

 others. Truth is acquired through science, which is "almost 

 alone in power to acquire knowledge." He adds a still more 

 fundamental ethic, that of "responsibility." Here the scien- 

 tist exercises judgment since the "very existence of science 

 demands the value judgment and essential ethic that knowl- 

 edge is good." The scientist must be individually responsible 

 for evaluating knowledge and for "transmitting it as may 

 be right, and for its ultimate utilization for good."t 



Simpson feels that the highest ethical standards, the great- 

 est morality, are involved in man's personal responsibility. 



* G. G. Simpson, The Meaning of Evolution (New York: New 

 American Library of World Literature, Inc., 1951), p. 155. 

 flbid.,ip. 156. 



