Darwinism in Ethics. 129 



tion, and through conduciveness to an end event 

 ually become identified with the end. Nor is the 

 musty example of the miser yet obsolete, as 

 readers of Mr. Spencer will remember. It is, 

 however, reinforced with new arguments in the 

 ethics of the evolutionists. They do not require 

 the plain man to believe that the tissue of his 

 ethical sentiments has been woven in his own 

 lifetime. They show him how the warp and 

 woof were spun in the brains of animals scarcely 

 yet emerged as men, and then, following the 

 movements of the shuttle in the roaring loom of 

 time, they delineate the formation of a moral 

 texture in our race a texture inherited by every 

 individual when once it has been acquired by the 

 species. And how precisely is it acquired ? By the 

 help of natural selection. The early societies 

 that did not happen to hit upon the practice of 

 justice, benevolence, etc., could not possibly hold 

 together against groups observing these relations ; 

 and then the constant danger of extermination 

 impressed the survivors with the indispensable- 

 ness of the fundamental virtues, which flamed 

 ever before them, as it were, in characters of blood. 

 What we are familiar with seems simple, what 

 we have always done we do again ; and who can 

 wonder, therefore, that our primitive ancestors. 



