Darwinism in Ethics. 127 



as may be seen, for example, in that peculiarly 

 noble and attractive exposition which the pre- 

 evolutionary utilitarianism received from its last 

 great exponent. In John Stuart Mill s presenta 

 tion of it the ethics of utility transcends itself, 

 and the hedonism of Bentham has to be supple 

 mented by the moral law or categorical impera 

 tive of Kant, which appears under the form of a 

 &quot; sense of dignity,&quot; a reverence for the humanity 

 in one s person, an abiding consciousness of an 

 ideal and attainable worth which forbids dallying 

 with lower ends however strong the attraction of 

 their pleasures. But it is not by such an amalga 

 mation of opposing conceptions that the evolu- 

 tiono-utilitarian commends his theory. He holds 

 that utility alone, under the action of natural se 

 lection, takes on the appearance of morality, and 

 he pledges himself to derive from this lowly 

 source all those lofty attributes with which men 

 have invested the moral law and glorified it as 

 the oracle of God. Thus evolutionary ethics 

 claims the field, not merely as a deduction from 

 biology, but as a complete scientific explanation 

 of the phenomena of morals. This aspect of it 

 we have now to consider. 



The moral law is popularly regarded as simple, 

 unanalyzable, or ultimate. &quot;When it is said that 



