CHAP, xi "DARWINISM IN MORALS" 113 



can be interpreted in terms of man's social nature. 

 Man is moral because he is social : yes ; very true ; but 

 we are no less entitled to read the proposition from the 

 other end, and to affirm that man is social because he is 

 moral. He is both social and moral in a higher sense 

 than the brute races. We must not assume that the 

 earliest stages in development show us the nature of an 

 organism better than the later stages. A frog is not an 

 effete tadpole ; on the contrary, a tadpole is an immature 

 frog. And so man's moral nature is not a corollary or 

 appendage of brute sociability ; on the contrary again, 

 animal sociability is a dim and imperfect prophecy of 

 human morality and human society. 



Of course, if Darwin's doctrine of reason were un- 

 impeachable, it would be idle to challenge his moral 

 philosophy while admitting his view of the descent 

 of man. But we find his philosophical basis very 

 insecure. Darwin assumes that instinct is given as a 

 fixed datum ; rational consciousness, when it supervenes, 

 works out plans and methods, but does nothing to 

 revise or remodel the inherited aim. Instinct plus 

 reason form a mechanical sum in addition. Reason is a 

 calculating faculty pure and simple. Instinct remains 

 what it was in the brute nature (social instinct for 

 example, as the germ of morality) ; it now wields an 

 instrument of incomparably greater power, but its own 

 nature and its aims are unaltered. We shall have to 

 give further study to this view of reason later on. Here 

 we must simply affirm the counter position, that reason 

 transforms and revolutionises everything. In this case 

 as in many others, development means transformation. 

 A man is not an ascidian, even if he is descended from 

 one. Nor is human morality the pursuance of animal 

 sociality with the resources of human intellect. No ; it 



i 



