Darwinism in Ethics. T 2c 



tions useful for survival in the struggle for life, 

 biology has led up to an ethical theory which 

 places the governing principle of human conduct 

 in utility ; since, on its showing, utility has gen 

 erated that conduct as well as the life and the 

 species in which it is manifested. In the war of 

 nature, nothing seems inviolate except what is 

 useful. The stone which the intuitional moral 

 ists despised has become the head of the corner. 

 In the evolutiono-utilitarian theory of morals, 

 the process which nature has blindly followed in 

 the development of life comes to a consciousness 

 of itself, and is recognized as the norm of human 

 conduct. &quot; The ideal goal to the natural evolution 

 lof conduct is,&quot; according to Mr. Spencer, &quot; the 

 |deal standard of conduct ethically considered.&quot; 

 Moral life is held to consist in harmonious 

 adaptation to that social tissue whose production 

 through natural selection was a prime condi 

 tion of the origin of a species of moral beings. 

 Moral rules are regarded as the expression of 

 those social adaptations which, on the whole, and 

 after infinite gropings, proved most serviceable in 

 the preservation of groups of human animals in 

 the struggle for existence. They are the picked- 

 up clothes which warmed and protected a naked 

 social body and enabled it to vanquish all its 



