EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY 



being (or another animal, if you care to cite the 

 Romulus-Remus fable), then I shall be prepared 

 to retract the opinion that Nietzscheanism is the 

 grossest, the most blasphemous, and the most gro 

 tesquely imbecile of all lies whatsoever, conceived 

 or conceivable. 



Nevertheless, there be those who still believe, 

 with the Nietzscheans, that morality is essentially 

 an artificial and unnatural thing, no inevitable 

 product of evolution, but a thing dependent upon 

 men s acceptance of certain dogmas. Destroy 

 we are told the belief in free - will, moral re 

 sponsibility, and future retribution, and man will 

 straightway wallow unrestrained in that sink of 

 iniquity so pleasing to his &quot;desperately wicked&quot; 

 heart. 



Those, however, whose eyes are opened to the 

 master-light are apt to resent this view as the most 

 outrageous of all impertinences, a colossal libel, a 

 blasphemy but thinly disguised. According to 

 them, morality is a cosmic product, naturally 

 evolved, with roots now buried in geological strata 

 of vast antiquity. We have discussed, in a pre 

 vious chapter, the Spencerian revelation of the 

 genesis of morality. We know the immense sig 

 nificance of the zoological term Mammalia, finding 

 in the breast of the mammalian mother the fount 

 whence love has flowed; and we have traced the 

 strange sequence with which the young of suc 

 cessively higher orders of animal are found each 

 to be more and more helpless at their birth. But 



286 



