THE LE8S0N OF THE LIFE OF HUXLEY. 711 



the macrocosm would not l)e what it is if the microcosinic atom wore 

 not questioning it-a conviction that the distinction l,etwecn the atom 

 which considers its verdict and the natural world which awaits sen- 

 tence IS not a distinction which we find in nature, but one that we 

 make by abstraction and generalization, considering a part as if it were 

 the whole, and then forgetting that it is only a part and not the 

 whole? 



Is the attempt to tind out whether nature teaches a moral l(>ss(,n 

 anything more or less than the question whether I am a reasona])lc 

 and responsible being, able to act wisely or foolishly, and to do right 

 and wrong? 



Huxley tells us the perplexities of ethics spring from the conflict 

 between man as a product of the cosmic process and man as a member 

 of organized society. He says that while the self-assertive ape and 

 tiger promptings of the natural man, which the ethical man bi-ands by 

 the name of sins, are the products of the survival of the fittest, life as 

 a member of an artificially organized polity demands self-restraint 

 instead of self-assertion, and is, in so far, antagonistic to natural 

 selection. 



One may well hesitate to assert that the greatest of all the advocates 

 of Darwin's work has, in an}^ degree, failed to understand it. Yet a 

 moment's thought seems to be all that is needed to discover that the 

 success which survives the struggle for existence is success in rearing 

 progeny, and not the welfare of the individual. It is because all my 

 ancestors in mv long natural history did, on the whole, act in such a 

 way as to promote my interest rather than their own, wlununer there 

 was any incompatibility ])etween the two, that I am in existence. He 

 who perceives that the ferocity of the tiger and the salacity of the ape 

 are as altruistic in origin as the industry of the bee and the mother's 

 love for her child, can no longer wonder if something in his own 

 nature impels him to acts which are not to his personal liking or 

 advantage; for the ethical nature of civilized man is nothing more 

 than one might have expected from his natural history. It is no more 

 antagonistic to the cosmic process than the fall of a stone. 



It is not as an independent whole, but as part of the universe, that 

 the stone illustrates the law of gravitation. If one were to consider 

 it a complete and unconditioned being, and then hunt within it for a 

 gravitative principle, would he be any more absurd than the ancient 

 sage who forgets that it is through his own eyes that he att«>m])ts to 

 look nature in the face and find out its meaning '. 



May not man's place in nature teach to the humble-nnnded natural- 

 ist something about ethics that was hidden from the ancient sage^ 



