July, 1893. EVOLUTION AND ETHICS. 63 



came the conception of justice-in-itself, of merit as divorced from the 

 effect of action on others, the abstract idea of goodness. 



The old world philosophers, turning from this new conception to 

 the cosmos, found the cosmos incompatible with goodness. Suffering 

 and sorrow, sunshine and vain, were distributed independently of 

 merit. With Greek and Semite and Indian the conscience of man re- 

 volted against the moral indifference of nature. Instead of bringing in 

 a verdict of guilty, they attempted reconciliation in various ways. 

 Indian speculation invented or elaborated the theory of transmigration, 

 in which the Karma or soul-character passed from individual to 

 individual, and in the whole chain the algebraic sums of happiness 

 and sorrow were proportional to desert. Attempts at metaphysic 

 were more potent in shaping ethics. Then, as now, a permanent 

 " substance " was supposed to underlie the shifting series of phenomena 

 of mind and matter. The Indians called the "substance" of the 

 cosmos " Brahma," of the individual " Atman." The " Atman" had 

 its individual existence only through its casing of phenomenal desires 

 and passions, and the aim of wise living was not merely to destroy the 

 body, but, by a rigorous and disciplined asceticism, to suppress all 

 individual desires, until "Atman" in negation of self became merged 

 in " Brahma." 



Gantama accepted most of these premises, but going beyond 

 them, he disbelieved in the substance of mind as of matter, and 

 reduced all to a shifting series of phenomena. 



Karma was handed on by a process of induction from phenomenon 

 to phenomenon; transmigration was abolished and Nirvana, the cessa- 

 tion of all became the ultimate good. But the means for this was not 

 asceticism, but culture of moral qualities, and a direct attack on the 

 baser passions as desires. 



The Stoics also were metaphysicians, and imagined an immanent, 

 omnipotent, and infinitely beneficent cause. Evil was incompatible 

 with this, and so they held against experience that either it did not 

 exist, or it was inflicted for our benefit or due to our fault. These 

 theories, although they remain on evidence, do not explain " why the 

 immense multitude of irresponsible sentient beings, which cannot 

 profit by such discipline, should suffer." The practical conclusion of 

 the Stoics was to live according to nature ; not nature in the sense of 

 the crude individualism of later days, but the higher nature of moral 

 man as opposed to the lower nature of the world in general. The 

 ethical system of the Stoics was divorced from this theory of the 

 cosmos ; it was purely intuitional, and they came to see that the 

 ideal wise man was incompatible with the nature of things ; that the 

 cosmos works through the lower nature of man not for righteousness, 

 but against it. So their " perfect way" came to be " apatheia," in 

 which desire must do nothing but execute the judgment of pure 

 reason. 



Thus Professor Huxley sees the same course in the evolution of 



