140 COMTE TO BENJAMIN KIDD PART m 



of the engine." * This represents the sum total of the 

 concessions which he would make to those like Messrs. 

 Geddes and Thomson or the late Henry Drummond, 

 who allege that Nature is not wholly red in tooth and 

 claw, but that a principle of love is gradually disclosed 

 and made predominant as we ascend the evolutionary 

 scale. He grants that the wicked process of struggle 

 is partially, slightly, very slightly checked, and checked 

 by justice ; but, in the main, cosmical nature is full of 

 struggle, and, from our human point of view, full of 

 wickedness. 



The rest of the lecture does not add very much to 

 these essential ideas. It verifies them by tracing former 

 evolutionary thought in India and Greece. Indian 

 wisdom regarded all things as embraced in an evolu- 

 tionary process extending through seon after aeon, and 

 life upon life ; but it held this process to be downright 

 bad and unhappy. Buddhism, its most characteristic 

 expression, rested on a pessimistic view of the world ; 

 such pessimism may have been one-sided, but its exist- 

 ence proves how little a belief in cosmic evolution did, 

 in those days, to guide men as to their personal conduct. 

 The cosmic process said " Live ! " The enlightened one 

 said " Extinguish yourselves ! " In Greece, the ethic 

 of the Stoics was alleged to be connected with their 

 Pantheistic evolutionism ; but Huxley contends that it 

 was really perfectly independent of its speculative back- 

 ground ; and that is very likely true. Coming down to 

 modern times, he complains that discovery of " the 

 evolution of ethics " has led men, in much confusion of 

 thought, to preach an " ethics of evolution " ; whereas 

 no such thing exists. Good of course has been evolved 

 but so has evil ; beauty has arisen in evolution and 



1 p. 197. 



