Evolution and its Consequences 97 



that the absence of thought is the cause of the beauty ? If so, 

 then if I do the most beneficial acts in my sleep, I attain this 

 apex of moral beauty. This, of course, he will not allow. 

 Therefore it is not by reason of the not thinking about it that 

 the action is beautiful, but, as Professor Huxley goes on to 

 say, 'because he loves justice and is repelled by evil.' In 

 this last, then — in this habit of mind, the beauty consists. 

 But will the Professor say that the man got himself into this 

 state without previous acts of conscious will ? Can a man 

 elect for justice without being able to distinguish between 

 the just and unjust ? If he loves moral beauty, must he 

 not know it ? 



Professor Huxley does not, I believe, mean what he says 

 when he asserts that acts may be moral which are not 

 directed to a good end. Were it so, such words as ' virtue ' 

 and ' goodness ' would have no rational and logical place in 

 his vocabulary. 



Similarly, I do not believe him when he says he ' utterly 

 rejects' the distinction between ' material ' and ' formal ' moral- 

 ity.i I do not, because he has elsewhere asserted that ' our 

 voUtion counts for something as a condition of the course of 

 events.' If, however, he rejects the distinction he says he 

 rejects, he thereby absolutely denies every element of freedom 

 and spontaneity to the human will, and reduces our volition 

 to a rank in the ' course of events/ which counts for no more 

 than the freedom of a match as to ignition, when placed 

 within the flame of a candle. With the enunciation of this 

 view, ' formal morality ' most certainly falls, and together with 

 it every word denoting ' virtue,' which thus becomes a super- 

 flous synonym for pleasure and expediency. 



Adverting now to the question of ' reason,' according to 

 Professor Huxley (p. 463), 'ratiocination is resolvable into 

 predication, and predication consists in marking, in some way, 



^ See ante, vol. i. p. 328. 

 VOL. II. G 



