176 Darwin s Ethical Method Unique. 



tific dogma bad erected between the various species 

 of living beings, it was not necessary for him to 

 inquire into the absolute beginning of life or of 

 intelligence ; and, as we have already seen, this 

 problem he specifically set aside. It sufficed for 

 his purpose that human and other animals were 

 alive and intelligent, however they may have be 

 come so ; and the only question he set himself 

 was how, beginning with the lower forms, the ad 

 vance in physical and psychical organization had 

 been effected. But even to this restricted ques 

 tion his answer is, as we have found, a mixture of 

 science and nescience. By far the most impor 

 tant part of the process of evolution is veiled 

 in inscrutable mystery. The development from 

 lower to higher life and intelligence has not been 

 sudden, but gradual, we are told ; yet we no more 

 comprehend the cause of the one than of the oth 

 er, and ultimately fall back upon a belief that it 

 is because organisms have innate tendencies to 

 vary. But that assumed, everything is assumed ; 

 for natural selection, which Darwin discovered, is 

 only the name for the survival of the fittest among 

 all those forms which nature so mysteriously 

 flings forth. What Darwin, therefore, maintains 

 of organization and intelligence amounts only to 

 this : given the lower phases, there is somehow 



