Darwinism in Ethics. 151 



claiming to account for its simplicity, universal 

 ity, etc. are not its essential attributes ; so that, 

 even if the evolutionist s contention be granted, he 

 leaves untouched the fundamental constituents of 

 the moral consciousness our sense of an abso 

 lutely worthful, the right, not merely the useful, 

 and our recognition of its authority over us as 

 expressed in the word &quot; ought.&quot; For these ideas 

 no experience can account, and every experiential 

 theory virtually explains them away as the indis 

 pensable condition to its own plausibility. How 

 ever long the process, whether extending through 

 one generation, as the older utilitarians imagined, 

 or through countless generations, as the evolutiono- 

 utilitarians assume, there never will be success, as 

 Lotze justly observed, in fetching into an empty 

 soul, by means of the impressiqns of experience, a 

 consciousness of moral obligation. 



Nor, in fact, does evolutionary science, relieved 

 of the metaphysical baggage with which it has 

 hitherto been grievously freighted, require us to 

 believe in the possibility of this desperate feat. 

 It assumes that morality has been developed 

 through natural selection. And because natural 

 selection presupposes a utility a fittest that sur 

 vives the evolutionists have fallen into the fal 

 lacy of supposing that morality was nothing lut 



