78 ETHICAL ASPECTS OF EVOLUTION 



roundings. Indeed, philosophers are likely on this point 

 to differ more widely than common men. Their confidence 

 in themselves renders them less sensitive to the levelling 

 influence of social beliefs, and they fail to recognize that 

 their intellect, which is sometimes joined to quite an ordinary 

 character, has no other function than to reduce to system 

 the material with which that character provides it. 



We must next distinguish value from utility. The former 

 compares different impulses or different degrees of strength 

 in the same impulse, with reference to the whole aggregate 

 of remaining impulses, and, as we shall see, the comparison 

 implies an assumption, tacit or avowed, of some general 

 end, which is not the same as the end or the satisfaction of 

 any single impulse. By utility we mean something much 

 more concrete, that is to say, the efficacy of any kind 

 of conduct towards the realization of any proximate end; 

 or the satisfaction of a single impulse. This does not involve, 

 as the concept of value does, any comparison of ends, or 

 go beyond the end or aim of each particular impulse ; and 

 that can be nothing else than its own satisfaction. Utility 

 has no independent value of its own, but depends for its 

 valuation on the value of the end it serves. lago s methods 

 had utility, but not value. 



No better quality can be selected for illustrating this 

 distinction than intellectual honesty. The aims of the 

 intellect are, in the first place, systematization by means of 

 the two opposite processes of distinction and generalization, 

 and, secondly, to give us knowledge of what will happen 

 in the future. Anything that conduces to these ends is 

 useful ; what thwarts them is hurtful. Now it hardly needs 

 demonstration that for their successful prosecution intel 

 lectual honesty is not only useful, but indispensable. And 

 what is meant by intellectual honesty ? Nothing but 

 a refusal to allow other impulses, such as the love of gain, 

 or of applause, or the desire to promote any other end which 

 is not purely intellectual, to interfere with the operations 

 of the intellect in ascertaining and systematizing facts. 

 The decisive superiority of the Copernican theory over the 



