Darwinism in Ethics. 135 



evolutionary ethics having made the radical as 

 sumption that moral laws are not categorical im 

 peratives which command unconditionally, but 

 hypothetical imperatives which prescribe means 

 to the attainment of some end, they cannot escape 

 the problem of determining wherein consists that 

 ultimate end, conduciveness to which alone gives 

 morality its worth and obligation. Nor, in gen 

 eral, has the school been dismayed by the mag 

 nitude or the obscurity of this problem. Possibly 

 it has not fully realized that the question is noth 

 ing less than an inquiry into the highest good 

 for man or the supreme end of human endeavor. 

 Be that as it may, one cannot but be interested 

 to find that, in spite of the distrust of reason 

 generated by modern theories of knowledge, our 

 evolutionary thinkers dare to face the problem 

 which, in undisturbed consciousness of reason s 

 might, ancient philosophers put in the foreground 

 of their ethics. Even in an age of agnosticism 

 thoughtful men come round to the sphinx-riddle, 

 What am I here for ? what is the end of life ? 

 The question may not, it is true, take precisely 

 this form in the mouth of a modern evolutionary 

 moralist, but that, after all, is substantially what 

 he is bent on discovering and what he must dis 

 cover miist, if his thesis is to be made good that 



