CHAP, xiv REACTION FROM DARWINISM HUXLEY 139 



Darwin of course he knows by heart ; and Darwin's 

 easy-going ethics felt none of his difficulties. How does 

 he answer Darwin's proposal to deduce morality from 

 sociability plus intelligence ? Primarily, it would seem, 

 by emphasising justice as the moral ideal rather than 

 sympathy. Sociability might conceivably explain the rise 

 of sympathy, but not of a sense of justice. " Wolves," 

 he says, " could not hunt in packs except for the real 

 though unexpressed understanding that they should not 

 attack one another during the chase. The most 

 rudimentary polity is a pack of men living under the 

 like tacit or expressed convention ; and having made 

 the very important advance upon wolf society, that they 

 agree to use the force of the whole body against 

 individuals who violate it, and in favour of individuals 

 who observe it." Out of this convention arises a sense 

 of justice, within the human pack ; and justice is 

 gradually deepened into righteousness. Now certainly 

 such a conception of the moral ideal is not so easily 

 fitted on to an evolutionary process as a more purely 

 altruistic conception of goodness. Darwin thought 

 sympathy or comradeship the chief point in ethics. 

 Huxley swears by justice. He is tempted to call nature 

 unjust ; he is sure that it is non-just. 



Once again, in a note, he returns to this point. 

 Having by that time formulated the evil of cosmical 

 nature not simply as pain, but as competition or struggle, 

 he adverts to the fact that packs of wolves, hives of 

 bees, and all social or gregarious creatures have 

 suspended the struggle within their own community. 

 " To this extent," he admits, " the cosmic process begins 

 to be checked by a rudimentary ethical process, which 

 is, strictly speaking, part of the former, just as the 

 ' governor ' in a steam-engine is part of the mechanism 



