80 ETHICAL ASPECTS OF EVOLUTION 



impulse itself, either through the decay of other competing 

 impulses, or when it has been unduly favoured by the 

 unknown forces which guide variation, may become harmful 

 rather than beneficial. It is in excess when it overpowers 

 the religious, the moral, or the aesthetic impulses. The same 

 thing cannot be said of intellectual honesty. There can be 

 no excess in the efficiency of any quality, when regarded as 

 the means towards the attainment of the known end of 

 a single impulse, though there always may be excess in the 

 impulse itself, when it is considered as the means for the 

 attainment of the common end of two or more impulses. 

 It is this which accounts for the instinctive aversion which 

 is felt, not only by the average man, but also by a great 

 majority of systematic philosophers, to all claims to explain 

 the cosmos by purely mechanical theory. Such pretensions 

 overlook the rights of other elements in our constitution 

 which are not less essential to our existence than the intellect 

 itself. What is demanded by the common sense of mankind 

 is that the intellect should confine itself to its own province 

 and its legitimate functions. Whether, then, we regard 

 the value of the end to which it contributes, or its utility 

 as a means to the attainment of that end, intellectual honesty 

 takes a position in the very first rank of human qualities. 

 The value is vouched by the unanimous conviction of reason 

 able beings ; the utility is demonstrable. 



It must, nevertheless, be conceded that in all these 

 branches of inquiry in which the method is teleological, 

 and which may be classed under the general term of philoso 

 phy, it is nearly, if not quite, impossible for any human 

 being to exclude altogether the influence of his own emotions 

 and aspirations and those of the people among whom he 

 lives. This accounts for the changes in the philosophical 

 beliefs of successive ages, and for the reactions of the opinions 

 and the fashions of one generation against those which have 

 guided its predecessor, which are often compared to the 

 swing of a pendulum. The direction, then, taken by thought 

 is given, not by the intellect, but by the whole of the ten 

 dencies of society and of the individuals which constitute 





