52 ETHICAL ASPECTS OF EVOLUTION 



love of life for its own sake, but, however much we may 

 envy special advantages, such as wealth or rank or dis 

 tinctions of all kinds, we value our own existence, taken 

 as a whole, more highly than that of any of our neighbours. 

 On the other hand, the same sanguine temper often yields 

 to a reaction which is equally unfair in its depreciation. 

 The flattering hopes we formed for ourselves or for our 

 children are disappointed, and our actual circumstances, 

 though they would seem tolerable enough to others, are 

 intolerable to us, because they fall below what we had 

 expected. We count as failure what may really be a fair 

 measure of success, and our injustice to ourselves makes us 

 unjust to the whole world around us. 



In these, and perhaps other ways, the emotions distort 

 and deflect the judgements of the many. The few who 

 approach the subject in a serious spirit of inquiry are 

 liable to disturbing influences peculiar to themselves. A 

 desire to reduce all the phenomena they deal with under 

 a single formula is common to religious and to philosophic 

 speculation, and in both is doomed to disappointment. For 

 the religious minded, the visible surfaces of heaven and 

 earth refuse to be brought into any intelligible unity at all. 

 Beauty and hideousness, love and cruelty, life and death 

 keep house together in indissoluble partnership. . . . It is in 

 the contradiction between the supposed being of a spirit 

 that encompasses and owns us, and with which we ought to 

 have some communion, and the character of such a spirit as 

 revealed in the world s course, that this particular death-in- 

 life paradox, and this melancholy-breeding puzzle resides ! l 

 With the philosopher it is the same. All his attempts to 

 harmonize and simplify his material lead to the discovery 

 of fresh difficulties, and he learns at last that much study is 

 weariness of the flesh. In these matters, as in most others, 

 the few count for more than the many. Nothing is more 

 infectious than emotion, and when it finds a systematic 

 expression, its effect gains both in intensity and diffusion. 

 The melancholy of an unknown individual will slightly 

 1 James, The Will to Believe, p. 41, 



