Page fourteen 



EVOLUTION 



June, 1931 



The Ethics of Evolution 



By MAYNARD SHIPLEY 



Mavnard Shipley 



TT is impossible to emphasize too highly the ethical value of 

 -^ the evolutionary concept. The Fundamentalists reiterate 

 that "the evolutionary philosophy is brutalizing and essentially 

 immoral." As a matter of fact, the expounders of evolution 

 have been notable for their high moral qualities, while the worst 

 brutes on the face of this earth 

 never heard of evolution, much 

 less believed in it. 



The unscientific anti-evolu- 

 tionist makes much of the 

 phrases "struggle for existence" 

 and "survival of the fittest," 

 whereby the strongest live and 

 the weakest die. But "Each 

 for himself and the devil take 

 the hindmost" is not, by any 

 means, a safe maxim even in the 

 struggle for existence. A wild 

 horse, ass, musk-ox, elephant, 

 etc., which would happen to 

 vary in the direction of purely 

 selfish individualism would soon be devoured by its natural 

 enemies and thus leave no descendants. The same is true of the 

 social insects, of many species of birds, and of most of the 

 higher mammals, including man. 



Man especially catmot live for himself alone. He could 

 never have evolved to his present high estate on the basis of 

 strict selfishness or individualism. The survival of the fittest 

 in the case of many animals involves the grand and ennobling 

 principle of mutual aid, as taught by Darwin and strongly em- 

 phasized by Kropotkin. Because no two individuals are exactly 

 and in all respects alike, variation often takes place in unpre- 

 dictable directions. Even in an apparently normal type of the 

 human family anti-social individuals sometimes appear, despite 

 the envirorunent, or, in some cases, because of it. The secret 

 of every moral aberration, say the geneticists, lies in the germ- 

 plasm. Some investigators lay the blame on mis-education in 

 infancy and in childhood. We even hear sometimes — from 

 non-scientists — that a moral pervert or a victim of dementia 

 praecox or some other malady becomes a criminal because evo- 

 lution is being taught in our schools and colleges! Yet of the 

 125,000 or more felons in our prisons, not five per cent, were 

 taught evolution, while from 65 to 85% have had religious 

 training, according to official statistics. 



It is precisely because I am an evolutionist that I hold such 

 high hopes for humanity. Despite the ups and downs of hu- 

 man history, on the whole the human race has been growing 

 better and better. When boys and girls learn that they were 

 not born depraved and inherently sinful and vicious, but are 

 the survivors of a very old race which has been, on the whole, 

 forging onward and upward in proportion as its members have 

 learned that virtue is its own reward, that kindness, decency 

 and fair play alone can gain for them a high and secure place in 

 society — when they learn that meanness, selfishness and bru- 

 tality are evidences of reversion to a more primitive brute stage 



in the evolution of man, they will value the beauty of the ideal 

 in conduct and do their best to make this our world a more 

 satisfying and more delightful place in which to live, or in 

 which, perhaps, to bring up beloved children of their own. 



To learn the laws of the universe is to learn also that we 

 must obey those laws or perish. Morality consists, in the last 

 analysis, in obedience to nature's laws. To ignore these rules 

 of life is to court degradation and ultimately extinction. The 

 concept of evolution provides us with sanctions for right con- 

 duct which are based upon the unavoidable laws of nature itself. 

 From the consequences of violation of these laws no one can 

 escape. 



We must conclude, then, that evolution not only gives a 

 unity and direction to the study of human culture as a whole, 

 and that modern science is unintelligible without it, but also 

 that this discipline has great value as an educational agency. 



For the student who views in imagination the long and 

 difficult struggle of man upward through the ages there is a 

 real sanction for right conduct as well as a penalty for malad- 

 justed behavior. There is, moreover, ground for unfailing 

 optimism, for confidence in a happier and nobler future for 

 humanity. The enlightened evolutionist joyfully climbs the 

 heights of being, eager to advance, responsive to every uplifting 

 influence, scornful of the promptings of inherited brute emo- 

 tion, spurred onward by the lure of happiness, his face ever 

 turned toward the sunlight of a more glorious future. Behind 

 him hes the long ancestral night of ignorance and brutality and 

 superstition. Before him lies the pathway of perfection, the 

 guerdon of a heaven to be realized within us. 



Many causes are involved in the processes of human evolu- 

 tion, some of them obscure, others still unknown; but among 

 all the factors that are clearly recognizable stands out this 

 salient principle or law of mutal aid, of friendly co-operation 

 as a means to higher life and fuller joy. Spreading out from 

 the limited circle of the immediate family of parents and 

 children, her wave of altruism and good will enlarges to encom- 

 pass the tribe, the nation, and, in the not distant future, let 

 us hope, all of the nations and all of the peoples. When we 

 look upon human beings as the inheritors of one comparatively 

 minute globe in the depths of boundless space, members of one 

 great hiunan family, it is not difficult for the evolutionist to 

 envisage an early realization of that dream of poet and philo- 

 sopher, the universal brotherhood of man. 



Even were the ennobling concept of evolution not the in- 

 valuable guide that it is to further discoveries; even though it 

 did not, as it actually does, afford us a solution of many other- 

 wise insoluble problems, it must yet be taught in our schools 

 for its value as an ethical incentive to the highest and noblest * 

 aspirations of the human race. 



SCIENCE LEAGUE OF AMERICA 



Champions Freedom of Science Teaching. Every evolutionist 

 invited to join. Particulars from Maynard Shipley, Pres., 830 

 Market Street, San Francisco. 



