The Evolution of Morality. 203 



ton. This must serve as excuse for repeating 

 here the main conclusion of our first chapter 

 namely, that ethics, if it is to become truly a sci 

 ence, must shun the path of speculation and fol 

 low closely the historical method. 



The citation of facts from savage morality, 

 though merely for purposes of illustration, consti 

 tutes, I have said, Darwin s most worthful contri 

 bution to morals. His speculative ethics is, in 

 deed, generally supposed to be an organic part of 

 that evolutionary science whose basis he laid in 

 biology ; but it has been shown in the preceding 

 chapters that Darwinian biology is absolutely in 

 different to every philosophy, and has no more 

 logical connection with the metaphysical and eth 

 ical views that have been grafted upon it by Dar 

 win and others than with the opposite views. 

 Further, it has been shown that, in themselves 

 considered, Darwin s ethical speculations, whether 

 judged by their internal self -consistency or their 

 adequacy to the external facts, are wholly unsat 

 isfactory and untenable. To the arguments on 

 which these conclusions were based we need not 

 here recur. But another point remains, which 

 might, indeed, be passed over in a mere examina 

 tion of Darwinism, but which, as it is suggested 

 by Darwin s appeal to savage morality, cannot be 



