II EVOLUTION AND ETHICS 53 



methods of the struggle for existence are not 

 reconcilable with sound ethical principles. 



The hero of our story descended the bean-stalk, 

 and came back to the common world, where fare 

 and work were alike hard ; where ugly competitors 

 were much commoner than beautiful princesses ; 

 and where the everlasting battle with self was 

 much less sure to be crowned with victory than a 

 turn-to with a giant. We have done the like. 

 Thousands upon thousands of our fellows, thou 

 sands of years ago, have preceded us in finding 

 themselves face to face with the same dread prob 

 lem of evil. They also have seen that the cosmic 

 process is evolution ; that it is full of wonder, full 

 of beauty, and, at the same time, full of pain. 

 They have sought to discover the bearing of these 

 great facts on ethics ; to find out whether there 

 is, or is not, a sanction for morality in the ways of 

 the cosmos. 



Theories of the universe, in which the conception 

 of evolution plays a leading part, were extant at 

 least six centuries before our era. Certain know 

 ledge of them, in the fifth century, reaches us 

 from localities as distant as the valley of the 

 Ganges and the Asiatic coasts of the ^Egean. To 

 the early philosophers of Hindostan, no less than 

 to those of Ionia, the salient and characteristic 

 feature of the phenomenal world was its change- 



