14 Third Assumption. 



chanical. This must, I think, be regarded as the 

 fundamental tenet of the school ; but in England, 

 at least, it seems to have been taught with all the 

 reserve of an esoteric mystery. The accredited 

 expounders of the subject have in their exoteric 

 writings enveloped this point in such a wrapping 

 of extraneous discussions that even a master 

 in ethics like Professor Sidgwick has hazarded 

 the declaration that evolution, however con 

 ceived, can make no difference at all in our 

 ethical theories. But, with all deference to so 

 eminent an authority, I hold that if this mechan 

 ical conception of moral evolution be conceded, 

 the question of an ethical end of what we ought 

 to aim at becomes unmeaning, since there cannot, 

 in a literal sense, be any ends or aims for a being 

 conceived as a mere mechanism, even though its 

 random acts have through natural selection been 

 solidified into habits, and habits, on the super 

 vention of consciousness, been reflected as rules. 

 And this interpretation of evolution would be as 

 fatal to practice as to theory. An individual 

 who really accepted it must regard moral respon 

 sibility as illusory, as nothing but an echo of 

 the modes of conduct which enabled the human 

 species to overcome what was untoward to its 

 progress or what threatened its extinction. For 



